Wandering Albatross Breeding Season

Since early December the wanals have been returning to BI to get ready for the new breeding season. These birds are not annual breeders though, if successful in raising a chick they only breed on alternate years. This is because the egg is laid in December, hatches in March but then takes around 278 days to fledge!

A couple of small patches of fluff still but this chick is ready to fledge!

This means the chicks do not leave until November to January time and so the adults do not have the resources to breed again immediately. They must spend a year out to sea feeding, but for birds that are long-lived (some pass 50 years old!) and only reach breeding maturity at around 10 years old they can take their time.

Male on the nest (much whiter), female standing guard (greyer edges to feathers, darker wings and smaller head)

The adults that did not breed last year are now back on BI though and they have been displaying and conducting their courtship rituals, giving us great views of sky-pointing and wing stretching displays.

Sky-pointing and wing display

Lucy monitors the study colony of wanals regularly, but as the new nesting season has begun it was time to go out and stake every nest on the island. As you will have seen when we completed the geep census, covering the whole island isn’t the easiest task but at least the wanals are large enough to be spotted from much greater distances!

Wanals can be seen across the landscape

Staking takes place over 2 periods of a week each in order to get all nests that arrive at slightly different times. The first week was over Christmas and New Year! The second week took place from the 5^th January.

Wanal counting on Christmas Day!

Nests are only staked if the adults are confirmed to be breeding pairs. This means checking that each nest has an egg.

Wanal egg being incubated by dad and protected by mum from a neighbouring adult behind!

After a lot of effort from everyone on the team the first staking round was successfully completed on the 31^st December and the second on the 10^th January. From this point on it was our task to try and confirm the identity of both partners on every nest. Therefore, whenever we were out in the field we would check the wanal nests in that area to try and confirm the partners.

It is always helpful when both adults are in attendance together

By doing this regularly we were able to confirm both attending adults for a lot of the nests but in order to try and get as many as possible as soon as possible we completed a full island survey on the 31^st January and 1st February. By covering the whole island in just 2 days we were able to confirm a lot more partners, and now it is back to checking the remaining nests over the coming weeks to complete all the partners.

Majestic birds!