Icon: enlarge
After probably 36 chicks, fully professional at breeding: Laysan albatross Wisdom on their nest
Photo: Jon Brack / Friends of Midway Atoll NWR
"You wouldn't expect a bird to be as extraordinary as she is," says Richard Philips of Albatross Lady Wisdom.
Philips is a marine bird specialist in the British Antarctic Survey polar research program and has a long history of researching the albatross colony where Wisdom lives.
Wisdom (wisdom) is not only much older than its fellow species, it has now also hatched another chick.
And that at a proud age of at least 70 years.
The New York Times had previously reported on it.
Wisdom laid the egg in the Midway Atoll in the northern Pacific at the end of last year.
The archipelago is one of the largest breeding colonies for albatrosses in the world, and numerous other bird species give birth there as well.
Wisdom is one of the Laysan albatrosses.
Every year she returns to the small archipelago to breed.
Normally, the animals only lay one egg per year because the rearing is so laborious.
Icon: enlarge
Papa Akeakamai with chicks
Photo: Jon Brack / Friends of Midway Atoll NWR
Experts have been observing the wild birds on the Midway Atoll since 1956. Even then, Wisdom was breeding there.
Because Laysan albatrosses normally only reach sexual maturity from the age of five, they must be at least 70 years old.
The life expectancy of birds is actually only around 50 years.
"Albatrosses have been living for birds for an extremely long time, but it is unusual for wisdom to live that long," says Philips.
The next older known Laysan albatross is 61 years old - at least nine years younger than Wisdom.
Researchers cannot explain why Wisdom lives so much longer.
Albatross couples usually stay together for life.
However, Wisdom has already survived some of their partners, and Albatross male Akeakamai has been by their side since at least 2012.
He is also the father of the hatched chick.
Researchers estimate that Wisdom has now hatched up to 36 eggs.
Will it be your last chick?
Wisdom and Akeakamai will now look after their offspring together and take turns supplying them with octopus or fish eggs by choking up the pre-digested food and feeding it directly into the chick's beak.
The chick should take off on its first flight in the summer.
Albatrosses spend most of their lives in the air.
According to estimates, Wisdom alone has covered more than five million kilometers in the past few decades - in purely mathematical terms, she has flown around the globe a good 125 times.
"Normally, one would expect albatrosses to age similarly to humans and that their breeding ability decreases with age," says Vogel expert Philips.
This is not the case with Wisdom so far.
She has hatched a chick every winter for the past 15 years.
How long will this go on?
"Nobody knows," says Philips.
Icon: The mirror
koe