Wisdom – USFWS / SWNS
The world’s oldest known bird has returned to her home island to hatch yet another chick, at nearly 74 years old.
Named Wisdom, the Laysan albatross has been spotted this month caring for her youngster on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean.
Like others of her species, Wisdom returns to the same nesting site each year to reunite with her mate and if able, lay one egg.
For decades, park officials in the Hawaiian Archipelago observed Wisdom doing this with the same partner (named Akeakamai), but that bird has not been seen for several years, which caused Wisdom to begin courtship dances with other males last year.
The spry septuagenarian is estimated to have produced 50-60 eggs in her lifetime, successfully fledging as many as 30 chicks, according to the expert staff at the refuge 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu.
Albatross parents share the responsibility of feeding their young by taking turns hunting while the other stays at the nest to watch over the chick.
“So when Wisdom returns to the nest (it’s) her partner’s turn to go hunt for squid, fish and crustaceans,” said a statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service–Pacific Region.
Biologists first identified and banded Wisdom in 1956 after she laid an egg. They determined her estimated age from that event 69 years ago, because the large seabirds aren’t known to breed before age five.
Hundreds of thousands of the gull-like seabirds begin returning to Midway Atoll each November to nest and raise their young—and Wisdom has been doing this for seven decades, since General Eisenhower was the US president World’s Oldest Bird Gives Birth to Yet Another Chick–at Nearly 74 Years Old:
