The Wings of Wisdom

Birds are generally not known for their long lifespans. Some species live only an average of a few years in the wild, while others can defy the odds and live for decades.

Meet one of those birds, a Layasan albatross named Wisdom, who at 74 not only still flies, but recently laid another egg.

She has been astonishing scientists for decades.

“It’s very rare” that Wisdom has laid an egg at her age, Jonathan Plissner, a wildlife biologist at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, told the BBC. “We don’t know of any others that are even close to her age.”

Wisdom is part of a breed of seabirds, which dwell in the tropical Pacific, mostly on Hawaiian islands, and generally live about 30 years. She’s also the world’s oldest known bird in the wild.

Wisdom laid her most recent egg on Nov. 27 on Midway Atoll, a speck of land in the Pacific Ocean, according to a post on social media by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Researchers are hopeful that it will hatch in about two months, making Wisdom a mother for the 30th time – her last egg hatching was in 2021.

Plissner believes that Wisdom has outlived at least three mates, even though albatrosses usually mate for life. She mated with another albatross named Akeakamai for decades, but Akeakamai has not been seen in a few years.

Wisdom’s new mate has now been outfitted with a tracking band by researchers. The new mate stayed back to incubate the egg on Midway Atoll while Wisdom headed back to the sea for some time. Wisdom has spent most of her life at sea, with her tracker indicating that she has flown about 3.7 million miles.

“The fact that she’s old is one thing,” Carl Safina, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University, told the New York Times. “The fact that she has survived this long is actually much more impressive,” Safina marveled, referring to the increasing environmental dangers to Wisdom’s species, including plastic pollution and rising sea levels that threaten their nesting grounds.

“I think it’s impossible for us to look at that bird and not be stunned that she is still breeding and has laid an egg,” Safina added.

Although birds can lay eggs late into life, they may slow down as they get older. Wisdom was originally found in a nest, with researchers at the time estimating she was at least five years old. Her exact age is unknown, although the estimation of her being around 74 years old is based on when she was banded, in 1956.

Meanwhile, this albatross is a survivor: In 2011, she lived through a deadly tsunami and evaded marine plastics and other environmental dangers that face many species, according to the Ocean Conservatory.

Now she spends the year, as she always has, flying in the North Pacific and/or southern Bering Sea, around the Aleutians and perhaps west toward the Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan, before returning to her home base of Midway Atoll, home to one of the largest colonies of albatrosses.

Meanwhile, scientists are excited to watch Wisdom break more records. “She’s important for us to understand survivorship,” said Beth Flint, a wildlife biologist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, opining: “She knows so much, has seen so much.”