Rare glimpse of wandering albatross

SUCH may have been the sentiments of Conor Ryan of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group when he spotted a black-browed albatross from the deck of the Celtic Explorer on the Feb 29.

The research vessel was 160 nautical miles south-west of Mizen Head.

Sightings of the Ancient Mariner’s bird of ill-omen are most unusual in the North Atlantic, although another black-browed was recorded off the Kerry coast two years ago. According to Niall Keogh of BirdWatch Ireland, who was also on the Explorer, there have been several sightings of these ocean wanderers at Irish headlands in recent decades. One bird, famously, joined the gannet colony at Unst in the Shetlands in 1974 and again in 1975.

The palaeontologists say that, prior to the recent ice ages, albatrosses frequented the North Atlantic. So why don’t they do so now? The answer may have something to do with the size of the various oceans.

Most of the world’s landmass is in the northern hemisphere, which means the southern half of the world has greater expanses of water. Perhaps these offered such scope to albatrosses that they didn’t bother re-colonising the North Atlantic when the ice melted. But this can’t explain why the giant birds don’t visit our food-rich waters at least seasonally. Niall Keogh has an intriguing explanation.

He blames the notorious doldrums:

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.

Albatross comes from ‘alcatraz’, the Portuguese for ‘pelican’, a corruption of the Arabic ‘al cadous’. There are 21 species in the famous family, which includes the largest seabirds in the world. Some have a wingspan of three and a half metres. The North Atlantic gannet, our nearest equivalent though not a relative, is only one and three quarter metres from wingtip to wingtip.

To earn a living out at sea, a bird must be either an accomplished underwater swimmer or a highly efficient flyer and plunge diver. It’s hard to be both; to out-swim fish a bird must be heavy, have strong legs and wings which double as fins. A flyer, on the other hand, needs long narrow wings to give it lift and body weight must be kept to a minimum. Excess baggage, as Ryanair passengers know, is expensive.

A sea wave pushes the air upwards as it surges forward. Albatrosses use these updrafts to lift them into the faster air-stream above the wave-crests. Then they glide effortlessly over the surface of the ocean. The longest wings in the world have special tendons to lock them in the extended position, reducing energy demand when gliding. I watched these giants from a ship in the Pacific; they wheeled around the vessel without ever flapping their wings.

Albatrosses have difficulty flying when there’s not enough wind or waves to help them. The doldrums around the equator, therefore, present a barrier to birds trying to go north. According to Niall, only the occasional one manages to do so. Then it’s unable to go south again. Birds, like the one frequenting the Shetland gannet colony, are effectively trapped in the North Atlantic. The birds, however, don’t seem to have a similar problem in the Pacific where the Ancient Mariner’s vessel was becalmed. The waved albatross breeds in the Galapagos Islands which are on the equator and four species do so further north.

But an exiled albatross need not fret. Things move slowly in the seabird world. Few albatrosses breed before the age of ten, so a young bird need be in no hurry to get home. Raising the single chick is also a slow process, so much so that members of the larger species nest only every second or third year. Life is long for albatrosses. Indeed, the bird longevity record is held by one of their tribe; a Laysan albatross, ringed over 60 years ago, is still breeding on Midway Atoll in the Pacific.