Laysan albatross | |
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Scientific classification ![]() | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Procellariiformes |
Family: | Diomedeidae |
Genus: | Phoebastria |
Species: | P. immutabilis |
Binomial name | |
Phoebastria immutabilis (Rothschild, 1893) [2] | |
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Synonyms | |
Diomedea immutabilis |
The Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) is a large seabird that ranges across the North Pacific. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are home to 99.7% of the population. This small (for its family) gull-like albatross is the second-most common seabird in the Hawaiian Islands, with an estimated population of 1.18 million birds, and is currently expanding (or possibly re-expanding) its range to new islands. The Laysan albatross was first described as Diomedea immutabilis by Lionel Walter Rothschild, in 1893, on the basis of a specimen from Laysan Island. [3]
It is named for Laysan, one of its breeding colonies in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The Laysan albatross averages 81 cm (32 in) in length [4] and has a wingspan of 195 to 203 cm (77–80 in). [5] Males, which weigh 2.4 to 4.1 kg (5.3–9.0 lb), are larger than females, which weigh 1.9 to 3.6 kg (4.2–7.9 lb). [6] [7] This albatross has blackish-gray upperwing, mantle, back, upper rump, and tail, and its head, lower rump, and underparts are white. It has a black smudge around the eye, and its underwing pattern varies between individuals, with some having narrower black margins and variable amounts of black in the underwing coverts. Finally, the bill is pink with a dark tip. Juveniles have a gray bill and a dark upper rump. [4] This species does not have a breeding plumage. [6]
The Laysan albatross is usually easy to identify. In the North Pacific, it is simple to separate from the other relatively common albatross, the all black black-footed albatross. It can be distinguished from the very rare short-tailed albatross by its all-dark back and smaller size. The Laysan albatross's plumage has been compared to that of a gull, two-toned with a dark gray mantle and wings and a white underside and head.
The Laysan albatross has a wide range across the North Pacific, with 16 nesting sites. All but 0.3% of the breeding population is found among the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, particularly the islands of Midway and Laysan. Small populations are found on the Bonin Islands near Japan and the bird has begun to colonize islands off Mexico, such as Guadalupe Island [4] and others in the Revillagigedo Archipelago. The Laysan Albatross is protected in Guadalupe Island Biosphere Reserve. [5] When away from the breeding areas, they range widely from Japan to the Bering Sea and south to 15°N. [4]
The Laysan albatross is normally a silent bird, but on occasion may be observed emitting long "moo"-ing sounds, descending whinnies, or rattles. [6] Female Laysan albatrosses may bond for life and cooperatively raise their young. [8]
A female Laysan albatross named Wisdom is the oldest known wild bird in the world. Wisdom was banded by a U.S. Geological Survey researcher in 1956, and in December 1956, she was seen rearing a new chick on Midway Atoll. Because Laysan albatrosses cannot breed until they are five years old, as of 2016, Wisdom was estimated to be at least 66 years old. Wisdom’s latest chick hatched on February 1, 2021, and her current estimated age is 70. [9] [10]
Laysan albatrosses are colonial, nesting on scattered small islands and atolls, often in huge numbers, and building different styles of nests depending on the surroundings, ranging from simple scoops in the sand [11] to nests using vegetation. [4] They have a protracted breeding cycle, and breed annually, although some birds skip years. [4] On Hawaiian Islands, breeding season typically lasts from November to July. [12] Juvenile birds return to the colony three years after fledging, but do not mate for the first time until seven or eight years old. During these four or five years, they form pair bonds with a mate that they will keep for life. Courtship entails especially elaborate 'dances' that have up to 25 ritualized movements.
Occasionally, the birds form same-sex pairs consisting of two females. This has been observed in the colony on the Hawaiian island Oahu, where the sex ratio of male to female is 2 to 3 and 31% of all pairs are between females. Paired females can successfully breed when their eggs are fertilized by males. [13] This phenomenon has been useful to conservation efforts in the Hawaiian Islands, where researchers have successfully swapped unfertilized eggs from female-female pairs with fertile eggs translocated from pairs nesting on military airfields and in other unsafe nesting areas. The female-female pairs then hatch and raise the foster chicks. [14]
The single egg is buff-white [11] and may have spots. [15] Both birds incubate the egg; the male does so first. Incubation takes about 65 days, and is followed by several weeks of brooding, after which both parents are out at sea to provide for the growing chick. The chick takes about 160 days to fledge. This time investment by the parents may explain the long courtship; both parents want to be sure the other is serious. The chicks are fed regurgitated meals of very rich "stomach oil" and partially digested squid and fish by the parents.
The Laysan albatross and the black-footed albatross have been known to hybridize. [5] [6] Like all albatrosses, the Laysan albatross is known to be a long-living bird. The oldest known live bird, a female named Wisdom, was at least 70 years old as of 2021 [update] . [16] In 2014 she hatched a healthy chick which is believed to be her 36th. [17] [18] The longest lifespan confirmed for a wild seabird was for a breeding male found to have been banded 53 years previously. Other albatross are thought to match or maybe even exceed this record, but few confirmations of very old albatrosses exist. [19]
The Laysan albatross feeds predominantly on cephalopods, [20] but also eats fish, crustaceans, and other invertebrates. [21]
Breeding location | Breeding pairs | Trend |
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Midway Atoll | 441,178 | Stable from 1992 to 2005 |
Laysan Island | 103,689 | Stable from 1992 to 2005 |
French Frigate Shoals | 7,073 | Stable from 1992 to 2005 |
Other northwestern Hawaiian Islands | ||
Tori-shima (Izu Islands) | 1,218 | Unknown |
Bonin Islands | 23 | Unknown |
Islas Guadalupe | 337 | Increasing |
Other offshore Mexican islands | 63 | Increasing |
Total | 590,926 | −30 to 49% over 85 years |
The IUCN had classified the Laysan albatross as vulnerable due to drastic reductions in populations, but the population may be rebounding. [1] The IUCN now classifies the Laysan albatross as near threatened. The Laysan albatross, while a common species, has not yet recovered from the wide-scale hunting of the early 1900s, [4] with feather hunters killing many hundreds of thousands and wiping them out from Wake Island and Johnston Atoll. [22] This slaughter led to efforts to protect the species (and others) which led eventually to the protection of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. [23]
The Laysan albatross has an occurrence range of 38,800,000 km2 (15,000,000 sq mi) and a breeding range of 3,500 km2 (1,400 sq mi) with a population of 1,180,000 mature birds estimated in 2006. [4] Midway Atoll, Laysan Island, and the French Frigate Shoals have more than 90% of the breeding pairs at 551,940. [24] Bonin Island has 23 pairs and offshore Mexico has about 400 pairs, with 337 pairs on Isla Guadalupe. [25] The northwestern Hawaiian Islands have suffered a 32% reduction in breeders from 1992 to 2002. [26] [27] However, the last three years have had a rebound that stabilized the period between 1992 and 2005. [25] This species was extirpated from Wake Atoll, Johnston Atoll, and Minami Torishima. The Mexican population has been increasing since its inception. [4]
In the past, harvesting for feathers was a major threat, along with high-seas drift net, but both of these have ceased, barring some small-scale illegal drift net operations. Current threats today are the longline fisheries.
70% of the global population of Laysan albatrosses nest on Midway Atoll annually. [28]
In October 2009, an estimated 10,000 Laysan albatrosses nesting on Midway Atoll, part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, were killed each year from lead poisoning. [29] The Laysan albatross has been globally listed as vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union and is a special trust species on the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the recently established national monument.[ citation needed ]
"Laysan chicks raised in nests close to 90 buildings left behind by the Navy are ingesting lead-based paint chips. This is causing shockingly high lead concentrations in their blood, leading to severe neurological disorders, and eventual death," said George Fenwick, president of American Bird Conservancy. "Federal funds are urgently needed to clean up this toxic mess to protect the Laysan albatross, as well as future visitors to the new Marine National Monument." [30] As many as 10,000 chicks, or 5% of hatched chicks, may be killed annually by exposure to lead-based paint. Many Laysan chicks that nest within 5 m of building structures exhibit a condition referred to as "droop wing", which commonly manifests itself in the chicks’ inability to raise their wings, which then drag on the ground, resulting in broken bones, infestations of maggots, and open sores. Chicks with droop wing will never be able to fly and will die of starvation or dehydration. Other chicks in close proximity to buildings also suffer detrimental effects from lead exposure. These chicks have blood lead concentrations that cause immunological, neurological, and renal impairments, significantly decreasing their chances of survival.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) estimated that $22.9 million was needed to clean up the toxic lead paint on Midway Atoll.[ citation needed ] The 95 federally-owned government buildings would need to be stripped of all lead-based paint and sand areas surrounding these old buildings thoroughly sifted to remove lead paint chips. When American Bird Conservancy staff presented the severity of this growing threat to an already imperiled bird species to DOI officials, they were told that the new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument did not have any federal funds dedicated to its operation. Moreover, the DOI officials stated that the current federal budget for the nation's wildlife refuge system would be insufficient to prevent the continued ingestion of lead paint by Laysan chicks.[ citation needed ]
In February 2010, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) announced an impending lawsuit against the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. [29] By September of that year, the Fish and Wildlife Service made plans to spend $1.4 million on cleaning the lead paint at the Midway Atoll military buildings, with plans to spend more than $21 million overall to removed paint chips from the soil and clean 71 buildings in total; the American Bird Conservancy reported that the clean-up would begin by July 2011. [31] [32] In 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced its plans to begin the clean up of lead-based paint at federal facilities. [33] By 2016, more than 20,000 cubic yards of lead-contaminated soil had been treated. In August 2018, Midway Atoll was declared lead-free after a long campaign of remediating the buildings and soils. [34]
The bird was first identified and banded by a USGS researcher in 1956 when she was incubating an egg, according to the USGS. As the Laysan albatross cannot breed before age 5 – and spends much of its life before that at sea – scientists estimate Wisdom is at least 60 years old. She may be even older, though, as most Laysan albatrosses do not breed until age 8 or 9 after an extended courtship...
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Midway Atoll is a 2.4 sq mi (6.2 km2) atoll in the North Pacific Ocean. Midway Atoll is an insular area of the United States and is an unorganized and unincorporated territory. The largest island is Sand Island, which has housing and an airstrip. Immediately to the east of Sand Island across the narrow Brooks Channel is Eastern Island, which is uninhabited and no longer has any facilities. Forming a rough, incomplete circle around the two main islands and creating Midway Lagoon is Spit Island, a narrow reef.
Procellariiformes is an order of seabirds that comprises four families: the albatrosses, the petrels and shearwaters, and two families of storm petrels. Formerly called Tubinares and still called tubenoses in English, procellariiforms are often referred to collectively as the petrels, a term that has been applied to all members of the order, or more commonly all the families except the albatrosses. They are almost exclusively pelagic, and have a cosmopolitan distribution across the world's oceans, with the highest diversity being around New Zealand.
The Laysan duck, also known as the Laysan teal, is a dabbling duck endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. Fossil evidence reveals that Laysan ducks once lived across the entire archipelago, but today survive only on Laysan Island and two atolls. The duck has several physical and behavioral traits linked to the absence of ground-based predators in its habitat. By 1860, the ducks had disappeared from everywhere except Laysan Island. The introduction of European rabbits by guano miners at the end of the 19th century brought the bird to the brink of extinction in 1912, with twelve surviving individuals. Rabbits were eradicated from the island in 1923 and numbers of Laysan ducks began to rise, reaching 500 by the 1950s. In an effort to ensure the long-term future of this duck, 42 birds were translocated to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in 2002. These thrived in their new surroundings, and another group were later relocated to Kure Atoll.
The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands or Leeward Hawaiian Islands are a series of islands and atolls in the Hawaiian island chain located northwest of the islands of Kauai and Niʻihau. Politically, they are all part of Honolulu County in the U.S. state of Hawaii, except Midway Atoll, which is a territory distinct from the State of Hawaii, and grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The United States Census Bureau defines this area, except Midway, as Census Tract 114.98 of Honolulu County. Its total land area is 3.1075 square miles (8.048 km2). All the islands except Nihoa are north of the Tropic of Cancer, making them the only islands in Hawaii that lie outside the tropics.
Laysan is one of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, located 808 nautical miles northwest of Honolulu. It comprises one land mass of 1,016 acres (4.11 km2), about 1 by 1+1⁄2 miles in size. It is an atoll of sorts, although the land completely surrounds a shallow central lake some 2.4 m (7.9 ft) above sea level that has a salinity approximately three times greater than the ocean. Laysan's Hawaiian name, Kauō, means 'egg'.
The Laysan rail or Laysan crake was a flightless bird endemic to the Northwest Hawaiian Island of Laysan. This small island was and still is an important seabird colony, and sustained a number of endemic species, including the rail. It became extinct due to habitat loss by domestic rabbits, and ultimately World War II.
The red-tailed tropicbird is a seabird native to tropical parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. One of three closely related species of tropicbird (Phaethontidae), it was described by Pieter Boddaert in 1783. Superficially resembling a tern in appearance, it has almost all-white plumage with a black mask and a red bill. The sexes have similar plumage. As referenced in the common name, adults have red tail streamers that are about twice their body length. Four subspecies are recognised, but there is evidence of clinal variation in body size—with smaller birds in the north and larger in the south—and hence no grounds for subspecies.
The black-footed albatross is a large seabird of the albatross family Diomedeidae from the North Pacific. All but 2.5% of the population is found among the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It is one of three species of albatross that range in the northern hemisphere, nesting on isolated tropical islands. Unlike many albatrosses, it is dark plumaged.
The Laysan finch is a species of Hawaiian honeycreeper, that is endemic to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It is one of four remaining finch-billed Hawaiian honeycreepers and is closely related to the smaller Nihoa finch. The Laysan finch is named for Laysan, the island to which it was endemic on its discovery. It was subsequently introduced to a few other atolls, and its historical range included some of the main islands.
The wedge-tailed shearwater is a medium-large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. It is one of the shearwater species that is sometimes referred to as a muttonbird, like the sooty shearwater of New Zealand and the short-tailed shearwater of Australia. It is found throughout the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans, roughly between latitudes 35°N and 35°S. It breeds on the islands off Japan, on the Islas Revillagigedo, the Hawaiian Islands, the Seychelles, the Northern Mariana Islands, and off Eastern and Western Australia.
The short-tailed albatross or Steller's albatross is a large rare seabird from the North Pacific. Although related to the other North Pacific albatrosses, it also exhibits behavioural and morphological links to the albatrosses of the Southern Ocean. It was described by the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas from skins collected by Georg Wilhelm Steller. Once common, it was brought to the edge of extinction by the trade in feathers, but with protection efforts underway since the 1950s, the species is in the process of recovering with an increasing population trend. Its breeding range, however, remains small. It is divided into two distinct subpopulations, one of which breeds on Tori-shima in the Izu islands south of Japan, and the other primarily on the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
The North Pacific albatrosses are large seabirds from the genus Phoebastria in the albatross family. They are the most tropical of the albatrosses, with two species nesting in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, one on sub-tropical islands south of Japan, and one nesting on the equator.
Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge on the northwest coast of the island of Kauaʻi in Hawaiʻi.
Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes. They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific. They are absent from the North Atlantic, although fossil remains show they once occurred there and occasional vagrants are found. Albatrosses are among the largest of flying birds, and species of the genus Diomedea have the longest wingspans of any extant birds, reaching up to 3.7 m (12 ft). The albatrosses are usually regarded as falling into four genera, but disagreement exists over the number of species.
The Bonin petrel or nunulu is a seabird in the family Procellariidae. It is a small gadfly petrel that is found in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Its secretive habits, remote breeding colonies and limited range have resulted in few studies and many aspects of the species' biology are poorly known.
Tern Island is a tiny coral island located near French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It is approximately 490 miles west-northwest of Oahu.
The term seabird is used for many families of birds in several orders that spend the majority of their lives at sea. Seabirds make up some, if not all, of the families in the following orders: Procellariiformes, Sphenisciformes, Pelecaniformes, and Charadriiformes. Many seabirds remain at sea for several consecutive years at a time, without ever seeing land. Breeding is the central purpose for seabirds to visit land. The breeding period is usually extremely protracted in many seabirds and may last over a year in some of the larger albatrosses; this is in stark contrast with passerine birds. Seabirds nest in single or mixed-species colonies of varying densities, mainly on offshore islands devoid of terrestrial predators. However, seabirds exhibit many unusual breeding behaviors during all stages of the reproductive cycle that are not extensively reported outside of the primary scientific literature.
Wisdom (Z333) is a wild female Laysan albatross, the oldest confirmed wild bird in the world and the oldest banded bird in the world. First tagged in the 1950s at Midway by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), she was still incubating eggs as late as 2020 and has received international media coverage in her lifetime.
The Northwestern Hawaii scrub is a tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion on the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Lindsay Young is an avian conservation biologist who has published over 110 journal articles and technical reports on Pacific Seabirds. She is currently Senior Scientist and Executive Director of the Pacific Rim Conservation. This nonprofit, research-based organization works to restore native seabird populations and ecosystems. She is also the current chair of the World Seabird Union. Young has also served as treasurer for the Pacific Seabird Group, as chair for the North Pacific Albatross Working Group, and as correspondent for the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels.
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