Wisdom the albatross, the world’s oldest bird, is still laying eggs at 74

Wildlife biologists in the Hawaiian archipelago anxiously await an albatross named Wisdom each year.

The world’s oldest known wild bird, 74, makes an annual pilgrimage to the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. But each year it seems less probable that Wisdom, who has outlived her species’ average lifespan by more than 30 years, will make it.

“None of us want to be here the year that she doesn’t show up,” Jonathan Plissner, a supervisory wildlife biologist at the refuge told The Washington Post.

Wisdom not only showed up among hundreds of thousands of seabirds last month, but she surprised biologists by performing a courtship dance with a new partner. The day after her arrival, refuge staff found Wisdom sitting on a new egg - possibly the 60th she has produced - the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced last week.

Biologists know her by her nest and bright red band numbered Z333.

Wisdom has been a symbol of hope for the species while expanding scientists’ knowledge of seabirds, Plissner said.

“The fact that she’s made it this long is really, really special,” said Plissner, 61.

They believe she had previously scoped out her new mate.

“She was observed doing a courtship dance with several suitors last year, then she returned this breeding season to her usual nesting spot,” Plissner said.

Laysan albatrosses like Wisdom are threatened due to plastic pollution, predators such as mice and rats, the introduction of non-native plants in nesting areas, overfishing and sea level rise, Plissner said. Many get caught up in long lines from commercial fishing boats and drown.

For more than seven decades, Wisdom has somehow managed to avoid all of that.

“The next closest albatross to her age that we know of is 52 years old,” Plissner said, noting that albatrosses typically live about 12 to 40 years.

“With Wisdom, a lot of it is plain luck,” he said. “But she might be carrying some good genes as well.”

Jennifer McKay, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said predicting how long Wisdom will live and reproduce is difficult.

“Scientists tend not to speculate without preexisting evidence,” McKay said. “So we use our past gathered data to project forward, and with her being the oldest, there’s no past data to project forward.”

Laysan albatrosses, which have wingspans as wide as eight feet and are known for their lengthy flight ability, often return to their birthplace for mating season every fall, Plissner said. The Midway Atoll hosts about 2 to 3 million of the birds, the largest population of albatrosses in the world.

Wisdom used to be compared to a Northern Royal albatross named Grandma, who was 61 when she produced a chick, but she hasn’t been seen at her nesting area in New Zealand in years and is presumed dead. Wisdom also outlived the person who banded her in 1956, famed ornithologist Chandler Robbins, who died in 2017 at the age of 98 from congestive heart failure and other ailments.

Robbins was working at the Midway refuge for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and believed the bird was about 6 years old at the time.

“I feel lucky to have met Chandler Robbins at an Audubon Society meeting when I was 7, growing up in Virginia,” Plissner said. “And now I’m interacting with the very bird he banded. It’s remarkable.”

Laysan albatrosses lay only one egg each year, and Plissner estimates that Wisdom has hatched about 30 chicks in her lifetime from the estimated five dozen eggs she has laid.

The seabirds mate for life, he said, and they take turns incubating their eggs and looking after their young, which they feed by regurgitating small fish, squid and crustaceans.

“The last time (Wisdom) nested was in 2021, then her mate disappeared after that,” Plissner said, explaining that she is believed to have outlived three mates.

“It was exciting to see her return last year and start courting and dancing with the other birds,” he said. “We knew then she was actively trying to find a new mate.”

An albatross’s courtship dance is a complicated and noisy affair involving about two dozen postures, with lots of beak-nudging, bobbing, honking and beak chattering, he said.

After Wisdom laid an egg late last month within feet of where she’d previously nested, she and her younger unnamed mate began the patient process of nest-sitting and incubation, which takes about 60 days, Plissner said. The new chick will likely hatch around the end of January.

Fans of the albatross matriarch are following her latest chapter and offering their congratulations on the Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge Facebook page.

Probably no one is more overjoyed than Plissner, who has delighted in Wisdom’s story since he came to Midway seven years ago.

“We didn’t know how she would respond to losing a mate at her age, so to see her kicking it up with the other birds gave us all hope,” he said.

“About 75% of the time, the egg will hatch, so we really have no reason to suspect otherwise with Wisdom,” he said. “And next year, when it’s time for her to go through the ritual again, I have no doubt she’ll be back.”