Oldest known wild bird returns to Midway Atoll to raise chick

Posted Tue, Mar 8 2011 1:09 PM by Matt Mendenhall

Pictured here is the oldest known wild bird in the Northern Hemisphere — a Laysan Albatross known as Wisdom. She is at least 60 years old, and as the photo shows, she is a new mother.

The bird was spotted a few weeks ago with a chick by John Klavitter, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and the deputy manager of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.

The bird has sported and worn out five bird bands since she was first banded by U.S. Geological Survey scientist Chandler Robbins in 1956 as she incubated an egg. At the time, he estimated the albatross to be at least five years old. Robbins rediscovered Wisdom in 2001, when she was at least 50. 

“She looks great,” said Bruce Peterjohn, the chief of the North American Bird Banding Program at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland. “And she is now the oldest wild bird documented in the 90-year history of our USGS-FWS and Canadian bird banding program,” he added. “To know that she can still successfully raise young at age 60-plus, that is beyond words. While the process of banding a bird has not changed greatly during the past century, the information provided by birds marked with a simple numbered metal band has transformed our knowledge of birds.”

Wisdom, Peterjohn said, has likely raised at least 30 to 35 chicks during her breeding life, though the number may well be higher because experienced parents tend to be better parents than younger breeders. Albatross lay only one egg a year, but it takes much of a year to incubate and raise the chick. After years in which they have successfully raised and fledged a chick — which on Midway is about two-thirds of the time — the parents may take the occasional next year off from parenting. Klavitter said that Wisdom also nested in 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

And since adult albatross mate for life, with both parents raising the young, it's possible that Wisdom has had the same partner for all these years.

Almost as amazing as being a parent at 60 is the number of miles the bird has likely flown. Adult birds average about 50,000 miles a year, so Wisdom has flown at least two to three million miles since she was first banded. That’s the equivalent of four to six trips from earth to the moon and back again, with plenty of miles to spare.

Laysan Albatross spend the first three to five years after fledging at sea, never touching land. Then they return to breed in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Some of their feeding grounds are off the coast of western North America, including the Gulf of Alaska. The parents tend to feed closer to the islands where their nests are when the chicks are very young, but they regularly commute to the northern Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Alaska when the chicks are older or when the adults are incubating. They convert the fish eggs and squid oil they eat into a rich, oily liquid, which they regurgitate and feed to their chick.

In the non-breeding part of the year, albatross do not touch land. The birds, scientists believe, often sleep while flying over the ocean.

Wisdom's long life is even more notable due to the threats albatrosses face. The birds often are hooked and drowned by longline fishing boats. They ingest large amounts of garbage found floating in the ocean and feed it to their chicks. And chicks on Midway can get lead poisoning from lead paint that was used in past decades. As many as 10,000 chicks, or up to three percent of the atoll's hatchlings, die from lead poisoning each year. --Matt Mendenhall, Associate Editor

Photo by John Klavitter, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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