Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans): Facts and Wingspan

Appearance: how to recognize a wandering albatross

The wandering albatross is a heavy, long-winged bird with a large pink bill that ends in a sharp hook. Like petrels and shearwaters, it belongs to the tubenoses: its nostrils sit in two small tubes along the sides of the bill. These tubes help it sense air speed and give it a good sense of smell, which it uses to find food over the water.

Plumage changes slowly with age, and this is one of the best ways to tell individual birds apart:

• Juveniles leave the nest almost entirely chocolate brown with a white face.
• Young adults gradually turn whiter over many years, with brown speckling on the back and wings.
• Old adults, especially males, become almost pure white, with black only on the wingtips and along the trailing edge of the wing.

Females stay darker than males of the same age. The legs and feet are pinkish, and many birds show a pale pink or orange stain on the side of the neck. In flight, the long, narrow, stiffly held wings and white body make the species look like a small glider skimming the waves.

The name exulans comes from Latin for “exile” or “wanderer”, a reference to its vast journeys. Some modern bird lists use the name snowy albatross to separate this species from close relatives such as the Tristan, Antipodean and Amsterdam albatrosses, which were once treated as the same bird.

How big is a wandering albatross?

The wandering albatross is the largest member of the albatross family, matched only by the southern royal albatross. Its wingspan is what makes it famous.

Males are larger than females. On South Georgia, adult males average about 9 kg (20 lb) and females about 7.3 kg (16 lb). Chicks can weigh even more than their parents just before they fledge, because they carry heavy fat reserves for their first weeks at sea.

Old reports of wingspans of 4.2 m (13 ft 10 in) or more have never been verified. Even so, no other living bird has longer wings. For a side-by-side look at how it compares with condors, bustards and swans, see What is the largest flying bird?

Habitat and range

The wandering albatross lives in the cold, windy waters of the Southern Ocean and circles the globe around Antarctica. Most birds stay between about 28° and 60° south, though they sometimes follow cold currents farther north, for example off southern Brazil, South Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand.

It breeds on only a handful of remote islands:

• South Georgia (South Atlantic), including Bird Island and Prion Island
• Prince Edward Islands (Marion Island), belonging to South Africa
• Crozet Islands and Kerguelen Islands (French Southern Territories)
• Macquarie Island (Australia), where only a few pairs nest

Nests are placed on open, windswept slopes and plateaus covered with grass or low vegetation. The birds need open ground and strong wind for takeoff, because they run downhill into the wind to get airborne.

Flight: how wandering albatrosses travel so far

Wandering albatrosses are masters of dynamic soaring, a way of flying that harvests energy from the wind instead of from muscle. Wind blows faster a few meters above the sea than right at the surface. An albatross climbs into the faster wind, turns and glides downwind, then swoops back down to the slower air near the waves and turns again. Repeating this zigzag lets it travel for hours with hardly a wingbeat.

Two adaptations make this possible:

• Long, narrow wings give a very high glide ratio. A wandering albatross can glide more than 20 m forward for every meter it sinks.
• A shoulder lock, a sheet of tendon that holds the outstretched wing in place, means the bird does not need muscle power just to keep its wings open.

As a result, flying costs the bird very little. Heart-rate studies have shown that a soaring albatross uses energy at a rate not much higher than when it rests on its nest. The costly parts are taking off and landing. In calm weather, wandering albatrosses often simply sit on the water and wait for the wind.

Tracking has revealed astonishing distances. Early satellite tracking from the Crozet Islands in 1990 showed foraging trips of several thousand kilometers, up to about 15,000 km (9,300 mi), while a parent was away from its egg. Read more in How long can albatrosses stay at sea?

Diet and feeding

The wandering albatross is a carnivore that feeds mostly on squid, along with fish, crustaceans and carrion floating at the surface. It hunts mainly by day, landing on the water and grabbing prey from the surface or making very shallow plunges. It is not built for diving, so it relies on prey that comes close to the top.

Albatrosses also scavenge. Dead squid, the remains of whales and seals, and discarded fish and bait from fishing vessels are all taken. This habit of following boats for scraps is the main reason so many albatrosses die on fishing hooks.

Like other seabirds, wandering albatrosses drink seawater. A salt gland above the eyes removes excess salt from the blood, and a salty fluid drips out through the tube nostrils.

Breeding and life cycle

Wandering albatrosses have one of the slowest breeding cycles of any bird. The main steps are:

1. Courtship. Pairs perform an elaborate dance with spread wings, pointed bills, head shaking, bill clapping and loud braying and whistling calls. Young birds may practice these displays for several seasons before forming a pair.
2. Nest and egg. The pair builds a mound of grass, moss and mud about 1 m (3 ft) wide at the base. The female lays a single white egg, about 10 cm (4 in) long, usually in December or early January.
3. Incubation. Both parents take turns sitting on the egg for about 11 weeks, one of the longest incubation periods of any bird. The off-duty partner may fly thousands of kilometers to feed.
4. Chick rearing. The chick hatches in about March and stays on the nest through the southern winter, fed at irregular intervals by both parents. It fledges after about nine months, around November or December.

Because one breeding attempt takes about a year, pairs that raise a chick successfully normally skip the next season and breed only every second year. Pairs that fail early may try again the following year.

Pairs usually stay together for life. Young birds go to sea for several years after fledging, often about five or six, before returning to the colony, and most do not start breeding until they are about 10 years old or older. Their courtship and pair bonds also earn them a place among animals that mate for life.

Lifespan

Wandering albatrosses are among the longest-lived birds. Adults have a high yearly survival rate, and many live 30 years or more; ringed birds have been recorded beyond 50 years of age. Long life is essential for a bird that starts breeding late and raises at most one chick every two years.

Only about a third of fledglings are thought to survive to adulthood, so a pair needs many years of breeding just to replace itself. That is why even small increases in adult deaths can push a population into decline. For records from albatrosses worldwide, including the famous Laysan albatross Wisdom, see How long do albatrosses live?

Threats and conservation status

The IUCN lists the wandering albatross as Vulnerable, with a decreasing population. BirdLife International estimates roughly 20,000 mature birds, with only a few thousand pairs breeding in any one year.

The main threats are:

• Longline fishing bycatch. Longlines carry thousands of baited hooks. Albatrosses grab the bait as the line is set, get hooked and drown. Losses of breeding adults are especially damaging for such a slow-breeding bird.
• Introduced predators. On Marion Island, house mice brought by people have been seen attacking albatross chicks on the nest, a behavior first reported in the early 2000s. Eradication projects aim to remove them.
• Plastic and fishing debris. Hooks, lines and plastic items are swallowed and can be fed to chicks.
• Climate change, which may shift wind patterns and the location of food.

There is good news too. Simple measures, such as setting lines at night, adding weights so hooks sink fast, and flying streamer lines (bird-scaring lines) over the hooks, can cut bycatch dramatically. Around South Georgia, these rules helped reduce albatross deaths in regulated fisheries by more than 99%. The species is protected under the international Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP), and its breeding islands are nature reserves.

Wandering albatrosses and people

For centuries, sailors in southern waters saw wandering albatrosses following their ships for days, wheeling around the masts without seeming to tire. Many believed it was bad luck to harm one. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), in which a sailor shoots an albatross and brings disaster on his ship, made the bird a symbol of guilt. The phrase “an albatross around your neck”, meaning a heavy burden, comes from the poem.

The reality was less romantic. Sailors also caught albatrosses for food and used their long, light wing bones to make pipe stems. In New Zealand, Māori used albatross bones for flutes, needles and fish hooks.

Today, the best way to see a wandering albatross is from a ship crossing the Southern Ocean, such as the Drake Passage or the waters off southern Australia and New Zealand, or on guided visits to protected colonies on South Georgia. Seen gliding past with barely a wingbeat, it remains one of the great sights of the natural world.