Species

Albatrosses are big, majestic birds that can be found soaring above most of the world’s oceans. Out of the 23 species of albatrosses, the most famous is the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), which is the largest flying bird in the world. It has a 11-foot (3.4 metre) wingspan, even bigger than the famous California condor — and it uses those massive flappers to travel thousands of miles in a single journey.

A life in the air

The albatrosses spend months in the air without touching down. But rather than flapping its wings, many large albatrosses travel such far distances by holding their extended wings in place so that the air rushing around the wings generates lift, similar to an airplane’s wings. Albatross take advantage of the extremely windy latitudes in the southern oceans.

With near constant wind in their environment, albatrosses are able to “lock their elbow joints and literally just fix their wings [in place] and just glide.” They also use “dynamic soaring,” which is changing the angle of their wings relative to the wind, to maximise the lift generated.

Far from land

An albatross can go a year or more without setting foot on land, although the birds do touchdown in water to feed on the squid and fish that make up their diet. It’s the tiny alpine swift, not the albatross, that holds the record for non-stop distance flying, as reported in a 2013 study published in the journal Nature Communications.

Sleeping on wings

It’s very likely that albatrosses sleep on the wing. A 2016 study published in Nature Communications described how a distant cousin of the albatross, the frigate bird, has many, seconds-long periods of sleep while flying, so sleeping in the air is definitely possible for other long-distance travelling seabirds. And, based on microchip-tracked movements of albatrosses, they can fly for hours on end, and so it is theorised that they do sleep on the wing.

Long live the albatross!

All albatrosses are very long-lived. The oldest wild bird in the world is a Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) named Wisdom, who was tagged in 1956 at the Laysan albatross colony at Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean when she was already a mature adult, making her least 68 years old, but she’s likely older, and she was still going strong — as of 2018 she was still raising chicks, NPR reported. Published in Dawn, Young World, August 8th, 2020