Midway Atoll!

Alan and I are just back from Midway Atoll, an idyllic coral-fringed trio of islands, where significant history and wildlife converge. I was scouting a tour which WINGS will offer in coming years.

Color-drenched Sand Island at Midway Atoll (Photos by Narca)

When we step off the small chartered jet into the night, into the cool sea breezes, our first sight is of Bonin Petrels fluttering overhead. The petrels enter their burrows at night to take over incubation duties from their mates or to feed chicks. At dusk, a tempest of petrels amasses just offshore, and when it's dark enough, they storm inland, homing in on their burrows, filling the air with their churrrs and piping.

A Bonin Petrel returns at night to its nest burrow.

The track from the runway to our rooms in Charley Barracks is lined with the nests of albatrosses, as far into the dark as our vision penetrates. And indeed, when day comes, the sight of a million albatrosses within the confines of a small island is astonishing. Midway is the birds' turf. How presumptuous of humans to think it was ever ours.

Charley Barracks surrounded by nesting albatrosses, all of them quite unconcerned that humans share their island.

Portrait: Laysan Albatross

Laysan Albatrosses are sovereign here. About 70% of the world's Laysan Albatrosses nests at Midway. Their numbers have been steadily rising with the change in the atoll's status from being primarily a military base to being managed as a national wildlife refuge. (In addition, the atoll is now part of the Papahanamokuakea Marine National Monument.) The number of Laysan Albatross nests had grown to about 480,000 in spring 2011, when the tsunami struck the island. Biologists figure that 110,000 chicks and quite a few adult birds were lost in that catastrophic event. This year the albatross nest tally is about 380,000, so the tsunami caused a downward tick, but they are still prospering.

An adult Laysan has just returned from the sea to feed its chick. A chick needs provisioning by both of its parents in order to survive and fledge.

When we look at the vast stretch of nests––nests of one sort or another are packed into nearly every available square foot––we see chicks everywhere, adults returning from the sea to feed their young, and masses of teenage albatrosses, all socializing, learning to display, checking out potential mates, forming their life-long pair bonds. When young albatrosses are about 3-5 years old, they return to their natal island to find a mate. They practice everything: synchronous displays, nest-building (such as it is), occasionally cuddling chicks.

A trio of young Laysan Albatrosses relaxes after a bout of strenuous displaying.

Like teenagers everywhere, these subadult Black-footed Albatrosses pass the days socializing and pair bonding.

Along with the vast numbers of Laysan Albatrosses, a few tens of thousands of Black-footed Albatrosses also nest––and a single pair of nesting Short-tailed Albatrosses.

Portrait: Black-footed Albatross

Short-tails are highly endangered. They mostly nest on Torishima, an island off the coast of Japan. At one time their entire nesting population consisted of only 10 pairs. By 1949 they were thought to be extinct, but a few subadult birds were still at sea, and they eventually returned to Torishima to nest. With intensive protection, Short-tailed Albatross numbers have come from a low of about 25 birds in 1954 to a current estimate of 2,000 or more.

The Short-tail is magnificent. It towers above the other albatrosses. The Laysans seem very curious about it, approaching and circling with outstretched necks, occasionally attempting to preen it. I am so very, very glad that this splendid and regal bird still rides the winds, glad that some day our grandchildren might also see it.

A superb Short-tailed Albatross (a.k.a. "Golden Gooney")

We'll return to Cambodia-related posts when there's a free moment, but right now I'm heading off for a Jamaica tour, while Alan holds the fort at home! A busy winter and spring!

The Realm of Albatrosses

What is it about oceanic islands that exerts such a siren call? What comprises the allure of farflung bits of volcanic rock and mounds of sand ringed by coral reefs, where seabirds nest in clamorous multitudes?

To name just one marvel, the flight of albatrosses takes my breath away.

Buller's Albatross south of New Zealand (Photo by Narca)

Albatrosses occupy my thoughts, as I gaze over a sea of Chihuahuan Desert, preparing for next spring's WINGS tours to Hawaii and Midway Atoll. To place ourselves in the albatross's world, we must shift our mindset drastically, from the upland's rhyolitic cliffs and coniferous forest, from grassland and desert scrub stretching to the blue-gray horizon. We must enter a waterworld driven by wind and temperature to form currents, convergences, and plankton blooms.

Earth's vast oceans can be grouped, at the roughest scale, into the cold, productive polar waters at high latitudes both north and south, separated by the warm waters of the tropics, where winds falter then die for weeks on end, becalming sailing ships and albatrosses alike. The great albatrosses must have wind.

They also must have food, abundant only in certain regions of the ocean where currents and upwellings create the right conditions for plankton and the food web it supports. Albatrosses also must have nesting grounds, and within the vast oceans, protected islands suitable for nesting are scarce indeed.

Warm seas form a barrier for many oceanic organisms that is as great a challenge as the Himalaya and the Amazon River pose for land-based creatures. On rare occasions an albatross may cross that warm-ocean barrier, but for the most part northern and southern albatrosses have followed their own evolutionary paths. In part due to the immense size of the Southern Ocean––more than 10 times as large as the North Pacific––many more species of albatross soar in southern seas.

Here in northern seas we have three species: the Laysan, the Black-footed, and the endangered Short-tailed Albatross. The Hawaiian Islands are prime nesting grounds for the Laysan and Black-footeds, and among the 18 Hawaiian Islands, Midway Atoll's stupendous colony of nesting albatrosses eclipses all the others.

Satellite tracking of Midway's Laysan Albatrosses has revealed that they shuttle continually between the Hawaiian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska, flying as far as 500 km a day between their nesting islands and their foraging waters, where they find squid to feed their chicks.

In addition to the albatross nesting extravaganza, Midway Atoll has hosted one or two wintering Short-tailed Albatrosses in recent years. A former victim of the feather trade, the Short-tailed population was reduced to only 50 individuals, but is recovering with protection and now numbers over 2300 birds.

In 1912 Robert Cushman Murphy, the great seabird biologist, wrote, "I now belong to a higher cult of mortals, for I have seen the albatross!"