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Portrait of Wandering albatross

Nature · Birds

Wandering albatross

Vulnerable · c. 20,000 mature individuals

Diomedea exulans — Diomedeidae

The bird with the greatest wingspan in the world, reaching about 3.5 m, a great white seabird of the Southern Ocean that can circle Antarctica in under two months and stay at sea for years without touching land. Pairs breed only every other year on subantarctic islands such as South Georgia, Crozet and Marion, raising a single chick over nearly a year. Longline fishing kills thousands of albatrosses a year, and the species is Vulnerable.

How to spot them

  • ▸Wingspan up to about 3.5 m — the longest of any living bird — on long, narrow, stiffly held wings
  • ▸Adults become whiter with age: old males are almost entirely white with black wingtips and trailing edges
  • ▸A large pale pink bill with a hooked tip and tubular nostrils along the sides
  • ▸Dynamic soaring: long arcing glides into and across the wind, with almost no wingbeats
  • ▸Breeds on subantarctic islands; the nest is a raised mud-and-vegetation pedestal on an exposed slope

How to know it

With a span of about 3.5 m, this bird has the greatest wingspan of any living species

Wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans).

Uses dynamic soaring to cross the Southern Ocean, circling Antarctica in as little as 46 days

Wandering albatross.

A pair breeds only in alternate years, raising one chick over about 280 days on the nest

Wandering albatross — biennial breeding.

Its specific name means 'the exile', and Linnaeus put it in a genus named for a Greek hero turned into a bird

Diomedea exulans, the wandering albatross.

Shot with a crossbow in Coleridge's poem, after which it was hung about the mariner's neck

Wandering albatross — The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).

Longline hooks and trawl warps kill thousands a year, the reason for the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels

Wandering albatross — Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Ringed birds on South Georgia and Crozet have been recorded breeding into their fifties and sixties

Wandering albatross — among the longest-lived of all birds.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Wingspan 2.5–3.5 m, exceptionally recorded a little more; weight 6–12 kg; the largest of the albatrosses
  • •IUCN Red List: Vulnerable, with roughly 20,000 mature individuals and declining
  • •Its article title on some sources is 'snowy albatross', the name adopted after the Diomedea exulans complex was split into several species including Tristan, Antipodean, Amsterdam and Gibson's albatrosses
  • •Breeds on South Georgia, the Prince Edward Islands, the Crozet and Kerguelen Islands and Macquarie Island
  • •One egg is laid, incubated for about 78 days; the chick fledges at around 280 days, so the pair can breed only every second year
  • •Birds may not breed until eight to eleven years old and can live well over 50 years
  • •Dynamic soaring exploits the wind gradient above the waves, letting it travel thousands of kilometres for almost no muscular cost
  • •The hero-name Diomedes refers to the companions of the Greek warrior, who in myth were turned into birds
  • •Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) gave English the phrase 'an albatross around one's neck'

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Sources