World’s oldest bird mom set to lay more eggs

She’s back.

The oldest known bird to lay an egg and raise a chick landed over Thanksgiving weekend at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean, apparently to do it again, at age 64.

Her name is Wisdom, but it should probably be Ancient Wisdom, because she apparently knows things that scientists don’t. “It continues to just blow our minds,” said Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the Bird Banding Laboratory at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md. Here’s why Wisdom’s accomplishments are mind-boggling and why she’s a celebrity among bird scientists and bird watchers.

First, most albatrosses only live as half as long as she’s been around. So mothers in the Laysan albatross species such as Wisdom usually fall out of the hatchling-rearing business decades before.

On top of all that, albatrosses face threats from pollution that kill them each year by the hundreds. Parents are known to frequently feed human-produced plastics to chicks by mistake, blocking their wind pipes and filling their little bellies with deadly junk.

Nineteen of 21 albatross species are threatened with extinction and their demise might be linked directly to humans. Wisdom has soared above these problems, taking new mates as old ones succumb to age or a death more grisly.

“We’re learning what these birds are capable of doing at what we consider to be an advanced age,” Peterjohn said. “She lays her eggs and raises her chicks. Common sense says at some point she would become too old for this.”

Her backstory is incredible. Wisdom has raised chicks six times since 2006, and as many as 35 times in her life, according the U.S. Geological Survey. Since she was first tagged in 1956 at Midway Atoll, the end of the Hawaiian Island chain, she has likely flown up to 4.8 million kilometres. Do the math, the USGS said. That’s “four to six trips from the Earth to the moon and back again with plenty of miles to spare.”

“It is very humbling to think that she has been visiting Midway for at least 64 years,” said Bret Wolfe, deputy refuge manager.

The man who first held Wisdom and placed a band over her webbed foot, Chandler Robbins, was in his 40s. Still working at the atoll nearly 40 years later, he picked up a bird among the quarter million that nest there in 2001 and found a signature on its tag that he recognized — his own. He was 81.

Now 97, Robbins continues to work as a volunteer.