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frigate bird

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.04 sec.

frigate bird

 or man-o'-war bird

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Great frigate bird (Fregata minor)
(credit: Jen and Des Bartlett—Bruce Coleman Inc./EB Inc.)
Any member of five species of large seabirds constituting the family Fregatidae, found worldwide along tropical and semitropical coasts and islands. About the size of a hen, frigate birds have extremely long, slender wings, which span up to about 8 ft (2.3 m), and long, deeply forked tails. Most adult males are all black; most females are marked with white below. Both sexes have a bare-skinned throat pouch, tiny feet, and a long hooked bill that is used to attack and rob other seabirds of their fish. The courting male's throat pouch becomes bright red and is inflated to the size of a person's head. Perhaps the most aerial of all birds except the swifts, frigate birds land only to sleep or tend the nest.


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You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught.
 
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