Wandering albatross

Where does the wandering albatross live?

Home: open sea and remote southern islands.

In the wild it lives in these countries: South Georgia, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile.

Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.

The short profile

Fully grown: wingspan about 3 m. It weighs about 8.5 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

This albatross breeds on lonely islands in the Southern Ocean, such as South Georgia and the Crozet Islands. Away from land it hardly ever flaps: it locks its long wings open and rides the wind, gliding for hours and covering hundreds of kilometres in a day. It feeds on squid, fish and scraps floating at the surface, and often hunts at night. A pair stays together for many years and greets with spread wings and rattling bills. The female lays one large white egg, and both parents take turns sitting on it for about eleven weeks. The chick stays on the nest through the southern winter, fed by parents that fly enormous distances, and does not fly until it is about nine months old. Because a pair raises a chick only every second year, the species recovers very slowly when adults are lost.

Find it on the globe

Wandering albatross is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.