Albatrosses | Diomedeidae

Albatrossen | Albatros

A tendon-and-ligament arrangement in the shoulder locks the wing in the outstretched position, so that hours of gliding cost almost no muscular effort. In a flat calm the birds can barely get off the water and simply sit and wait; taking off needs a run across the surface into the wind. Unlike the other families in the order, the two nostril tubes do not lie side by side on top of the bill but open separately on either side of its base. The heavy bill ends in a sharp hook that seizes squid, fish and floating carrion from the surface, mostly at night when the squid rise; behind fishing boats the birds squabble noisily over offal. Courtship is a long-rehearsed dance of bill-clapping, bowing, sky-pointing and wing-spreading, which over the years a pair grinds down to its own fixed sequence. The chick sits alone on the nest for months while its parents forage thousands of kilometres away, receiving a large helping of stomach oil at each visit, in which swallowed fragments of plastic regularly arrive as well.