KAPA'A, HAWAII - the Laysan albatross retreating each fall to the Refuge at Midway Atoll National Wildlife, she could be any of a million, a team of three small islands created from coral reefs in North Pacific. One thousand miles north of Honolulu, marks of gorgeous seabirds sprinkle the islands' uncovered fields, soda-size can egg, sitting each atop a single.
The Oldest Wild Bird Known in History
Both females and males sport the exact chocolate-brown wings and charcoal-smudged, which can stretch six and a half feet. But standing out is one bird: Wisdom. Displaying the red ankle band Z333, the oldest wild bird known in history, she is at least 70 years old this year.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Jon Plissner, who researches albatross longevity on Midway explained:"I have always had a feeling of solace when Wisdom shows up."
Researchers already know so much about wisdom. They know she was teamed up in 1956, as a part of an extended-term research program that has observed individual albatross over 260,000 since the late 1930s.
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How Long Can She Live?
They know her special nesting place. They learned that last late November, she laid an egg as has done out of the past 11 years at least eight times and that it hatched on February into a smooth chick. But there's however a lot about Wisdom and her species that researchers don't know, beginning with the evident question: How long can she live?
Plissner said we have no suggestion, we also don't recognize if she's the exception, she's likely just the oldest we know about. Plissner and his crew for the past 15 years have banded Layson albatross chicks and recorded the band digits of the nesting albatross in between 50-by-50-meter plots, data indicate that will someday contribute more information about how long they lived, that they can effortlessly outcast their scientists.
Exactly as Wisdom has done, the USFWS biologist Chandler Robbins who banded her died in 2017 at age 98.
One Intelligent Wild Bird
It's also possible Wisdom is older than 70 years, in 1956, she was prudently assessed to be five years old, the initial age that Laysan albatross can reach sexual maturity. Robbins retreated to Midway in 2002 and discovered an albatross with a rough band that needed changing. He quickly observed two things: He'd banded the bird at age 51, way back in 1956, she was a history-breaker. Biologists had pegged at the time a Laysan albatross life span at 40 years.
For her, a lot of years avoiding the destructive hazards of being an albatross-dangerous sharks and tsunamis, to name a few on top of recently posed threats by humans, such as fishing lines, and warming seas due to plastic pollution and change in the climate, she was given the name Wisdom.
Wisdom has since then become an internet darling, both abroad and at home. The Laysan albatross in Hawaii known as mōlī holds a well-known spot in indigenous culture as a character of the god Lono, who embodies agriculture and rain.
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