Wisdom, eldest known wild bird, has yet another chick
At more than 70 years young, Wisdom, the world’s oldest known banded wild bird, is taking on the challenge of motherhood once again.
An egg laid by Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, late last year on a speck of land in the Pacific Ocean hatched at the beginning of last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced.
Biologists believe that Wisdom, who was first identified and banded on Midway Atoll in 1956, has hatched between 30 and 36 chicks, possibly more.
Even before she became the world’s oldest known breeding bird, Wisdom defied expectations.
She has logged hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of miles flying around the Pacific Ocean and has earned the distinction of living about twice as long as most Laysan albatross.
“Albatrosses are extremely long-lived, but the unusual thing about Wisdom is she’s so much older than other birds,” said Richard Phillips, a seabird ecologist and head of a conservation group at the British Antarctic Survey.
“You wouldn’t expect a bird to be quite as much of an outlier as she is,” Phillips added, explaining that the next oldest banded albatross he has come across is 61 years old, at least nine years younger than Wisdom.
Though albatrosses tend to mate for life, Wisdom’s longevity means that she has had multiple mates, Dr. Beth Flint, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, reported. The father of the chick that hatched Feb. 1 is Akeakamai, Wisdom’s mate since at least 2012.
The parents will share feeding duties for the chick, providing a diet of fish eggs and squid by regurgitating the food that they forage while at sea into their offspring’s mouth. By the summer, the chick should be ready to fly for the first time,.
The Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and Battle of Midway National Memorial, found in the far northern end of the Hawaiian
Islands, is home to the world’s largest colony of albatrosses and millions more sea birds.
Albatrosses like Wisdom and Akeakamai return to the 2.5-square-mile island each winter for nesting and mating. The sea birds typically lay at most one egg a year, Phillips said.
How many more years will Wisdom survive to continue hatching chicks?
“No one really knows,” said Mike Parr, president of American Bird Conservancy. “We are in uncharted territory.”
Biologists at the Midway Atoll wildlife refuge have been studying and tracking thousands of albatrosses like Wisdom for 85 years, and Wisdom has been returning to the island for decades.