My Albatross Diary

I was a terrible keeper-of-the-blog last year, but I promise to be much better this season.  I will throw in some information about last year’s batch of birds in Princeville as the season progresses, in addition to stories of this year’s albatross visitors.

Last year, I saw my first albatross on November 10th.  She was in my neighbors’ backyard, and I cannot share a band number because there was no band on either leg.  Usually the nesting males are the first ones back, with some exceptions.  Unbanded is a female.  And the first one to return this year is also a female, as is her mate.  The two 8-year olds had their first nest together last year.  Unfortunately, they had 2 unfertilized eggs so there was no chick for them to raise.

K771, first albatross back, is Ana Malia.  Her parents have split up since she fledged.  Dad has found someone else to nest with, and Mom has not quite adjusted to not having a mate.  Mom has an interesting background.  She was banded on Oahu, but she fledged from Whale-Skate Island northwest of us.  That island was a victim of the rising sea level caused by climate change; it is now totally submerged, so she can never go back there again.  I hope she finds a new mate this season, she is a very good parent.

K771’s mate, K769, grew up a couple of yards away from Ana Malia.  Both of her parents have disappeared, and are probably deceased, unfortunately.  K769 is Barney.  Since the mother of my last two chicks is named Roger, I will not complain about Barney’s name.

This is Ana Malia giving herself a good grooming.  She is currently sitting right across the street from where she and Barney had their nest last year.  She must figure that this is a good spot for meeting up with her mate.  Nesters almost always come back to the area where they nested the year before.

Ana Malia tidying up

There weren’t any, really.

We all tend to give these birds our human qualities, but even surrounded by “civilization,” they lead the albatross life.  MK, the chick in my yard, had access to shelter, yet she chose to sit totally unprotected as thunder and lightning shook my house, and while the heaviest rain I can ever remember formed rivers through my yard.  She sits alone most of the time, with the occasional visit by a pesky non-nester.  She has no reason to be afraid of anything.  It is not a question of courage, she is a part of the natural world, she meets challenges as they arise; she has no time to waste in the human activity of anticipating problems.

Here is a photo I took the day after the storms.  She spent the day grooming her feathers; she lost more of her baby fluff to the rain.  The white feathers on her tail add to her overall cuteness, of course.

Can there be any more human concept than cuteness?  As my late mother would say, “Who cares?”

MK, the day after the storm

Of all of the 58 nests in Princeville, approximately 39% do not have a male.  56 of the nests are two females, and in one case, each of two female partners decided to build her own nest and lay an egg, then incubate her own egg.  One of those females abandoned her nest and is currently sitting on her partner’s egg.

Most of the female/female nests do not result in a chick.  They often each lay an egg, and usually the egg they incubate is not viable, unless one of them has mated with a male and that egg happens to be the one they choose to incubate.  However, we have one fascinating couple, Kp507 and KP468, who have raised 5 chicks starting with the 2006-2007 season.  Each time, KP507 took the first incubation shift.  And now she is sitting on their sixth chick.

The chick was dry, so he’s was not brand new, but his uncoordinated movements resulting in complete exhaustion indicate that he was very young when I filmed him.  Mom just wanted to sit on him, and he was not objecting to that protection.

KP468 left a hard egg, and will now come back to a soft chick.

Not a bad swap.

Someone asked me about the Princeville couple who incubated the cap from the end of a PVC pipe.  This occurred during the 2013-2014 season.  The following year they raised a healthy chick.  But during the 2015-2016 season, I never saw the male, and I have not seen him since then.  I assume he is dead.  I did see the female, purpleO656, several times in the area where they had nested, but for the last two seasons she has been appearing at the site of the Cornell web cam.  It is quite common for an albatross who has lost a mate to relocate to another area in the search for a new mate.

I decided to reprint a post from March of 2014 about this couple.  PurpleO656 has not found a mate yet, but she certainly has the maternal instinct required to be a good mother.

Here’s hoping!

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This week I have been observing a most unusual nest.  It is long past nesting season for the albatrosses.  I have never seen a nest built past December, nor have I seen a fertile egg laid past the third week in December.  Occasionally an albatross who is not nesting will sit on an abandoned, infertile egg, or even on an inanimate object.  One of the successful nesters in my neighborhood once tried briefly to incubate a tennis ball.

730 talking to tennis ball – photo by C Brookman

I have never seen an albatross spend more than an hour attempting this kind of incubation.  I have also never seen an albatross build a new nest in February or March.  Until now.  We have a bird who has built a simple nest around the sawed off cap from the end of a PVC pipe.  This nest was approximately 2 weeks old when I first saw it, and as far as the homeowners know, the bird did not leave it during this period of time.

I went to check on it yesterday, and found a male albatross named Kaulele interacting with the “nester” as she careful tended to her “egg,” moving it underneath the brood patch on her abdomen that keeps an egg in close contact with warm skin.  I know that the visitor is a male, so I am assuming the one on the nest is a female.  Kaulele is 7 years old and has never nested before.

Why is she staying on this nest, on an object that has rough edges and looks uncomfortable, nothing like an egg?  Has she ever nested before?

Will the male take over incubation duties for her or does he know that there is something wrong with this picture?

UPDATE:  Kaulele has taken over incubation duties of the PVC cap.  How is that for a first-time nesting experience?  I am hoping that he and his partner return to nest next November.  They have chosen a good area, where the residents all keep an eye on the birds and the chicks can easily fly/walk down the golf course to an ocean bluff, to spread their wings and launch themselves into the updrafts that will help to carry them safely out over the ocean.  Of course, this does not explain the chick who made his way across the golf course to one of the busiest roads in Princeville and walked on down to stand patiently at the lobby door of the Princeville Westin Hotel.  I think they do things like this so humans like me will never get to the point where we think we  know everything about them.

Note to all the albatrosses:  I retreated from that point long ago!  I’m the one waving the white flag!

Gator hatched in my neighbors’ yard in 2006.  He first came back in 2011, and by 2013 he had found a mate,  KP513, and they had a chick together.  They raised him in the same yard where Gator was a chick, and two years later they raised Pablo together there. They always got together in Princeville in the years when they did not nest, and always next to the same house.  In the albatross world this yard gets a 5-squid rating.

Last year there was no egg, but Gator appeared to be sitting in a nest, and to an observer it appeared that there might be an egg there.  But there was no egg.  Gator sat on the nest for two weeks, but KP513 did not appear to be as interested.

KP513 did not return this year.  I always assume that if an albatross who has a nesting partner does not come back, he or she has died.  It takes so much time and effort to find the perfect mate, and the ultimate test is whether they can successfully help to raise a chick.  I never see a missing nester again, and never hear that they have moved to another nesting area.  Gator has spent many days here, always in his favorite yard.  Recently he started working at building a kind of nest around himself.  He has not met another mate, he does not need another bird for the kind of egg he found to incubate.

The “egg” is a tennis ball that belongs to Heather and Steve’s dog, who had not willingly given it to one of those big, dorky birds who hang out on her lawn.  Gator clearly wanted to raise a chick, despite all those months of care required.  He is not the first albatross to attempt to incubate an inanimate object.  We had a couple who sat on a cap from the end of a PVC pipe, even exchanging incubation duties.

Incubating a PVC pipe cap

In the afternoon I noticed that Gator had left his nest.  He was displaying with two other albatrosses, a good first step in meeting a new mate.  With any luck, he may find that perfect someone to share his favorite nesting grounds with.

And the dog gets to keep her tennis ball, too.

One of the rewards of visiting the albatrosses every day is that I have occasionally had the privilege of seeing one return for the first time since fledging.  When they first fledge, the do not come back to land until they return to the area they fledged from, or occasionally to some other place that is colonized by Laysan albatrosses.  At least two Princeville birds are on Midway.  Occasionally I receive a call from a concerned observer telling me that they have spotted a limping albatross on the golf course.  When an albatross returns to Princeville for the first time, he almost always lands on the golf course, which has large, obstacle free  expanses of soft grassy fields for a bird to stumble around in while he gets his land legs.

And stumble they do!

One day when I was feeling sorry for myself because it was a long day and I really wanted to go home and relax, I saw a bird in the distance on the golf course who seemed to be having difficulty standing up.  He was not favoring either leg, he just seemed to be having problems navigating the beautifully shorn grass on fairway 14.  I checked out the auxiliary band number, and it was one of the chick band numbers I had memorized.  It was Tater, who had hatched and grown up outside my mother’s bedroom window, much to her delight.  With just about any other chick, I would have checked my lists of chick numbers and years sighted to make sure this was his first time back, but I did not have to.

Tater is a PMRF chick.  He was raised by two females who have never had a chick that was not delivered as an embryo inside an egg picked up at the Pacific Missile Range Facility.  My sister named him.  His older brother is named Spud.  Tater and Spud hatched in years when DNA tests were performed to determine the sex of each chick, and as many adults as could be captured.

I sat on the grass and watched Tater as he tried to cope with his wobbly legs and the uneven walking surface.  In fact, I filmed him.  I posted the film on YouTube, if you do a search on Cathy Granholm you can find that one and a couple of others.  So far, Tater’s first day back on land has had over 26,000 viewings.  My favorite part is when he attempts to display with another albatross and ends up falling against her.  She tolerated that, but was turned off by his weird gestures, and finally moved away from him and took off.

By the next day, Tater was walking fine.  He learned proper displaying techniques and found a possible mate.  He and an unbanded bird hung out together within 20 feet of the spot where the nest he grew up in was located, on my lawn.

I saw him for the first time this season on the golf course, near the Westin Hotel.  I had never seen him there before.

Tater returns

The next day he was sitting on the corner where my house is located.  Unfortunately for him, Hanai, the father of Kirwan, the chick who grew up in my yard 2 years ago, did not want him hanging out too close to the area next to my house where he was waiting for his mate to return, so he chased him around the corner.

Hanai

Unfortunately, Tater keeps missing the unbanded bird that I suspect may be the female he was meeting near my house last season.  One arrives here right after the other one has left.  Right now Tater is here.

I would love to have two nests in my yard, one on one side, one on the other.

Am I being greedy?

As of yesterday, I had seen 20 albatrosses in Princeville.

The great majority were in my neighborhood:  13.  Six are on the golf course, I saw another one just once in another residential neighborhood where they nest.

It always starts with a trickle, then the numbers seem to increase exponentially.  Some of them disappear periodically, perhaps to grab a bite to eat.  Or they may have met up with their mates already.  Unless an observer can watch them every minute of the day, it is very likely that nesters could have met up, mated, and left on their “pre-egg laying exodus,” which generally takes about 10 days.  When they return, the egg is laid and incubation begins.

It looks like we will have a good year!

Two more from my neighborhood returned:

Mr. Clackypants

• He was banded as an adult in 1989, like Joseph, and he is at least 31 years old.
• He had a nest in the 1989-1990 season with an unknown mate, but it was unsuccessful.
• He and Mrs. Clackypants were rebanded in 2004.
• They have raised 6 chicks since 2004.
• They have had bad eggs for the last 3 years.

PurpleO324

• Originally banded as a chick in 1989 on Whale-Skate Island on French Frigate Shoals in Northwest Hawaiian Islands.  That island has been totally submerged under the rising sea level.
• Rebanded on Oahu in 2008.
• Raised 4 chicks with her mate, K233, at end of Keoniana Road.
• Last season, her mate raised a chick with another female.  PurpleO324 also had a chick but he died.  K233 would not help her with the chick.
• She is now sitting not far from where K233 successfully raised his chick last season.  His new mate, KP465, is another of Joseph’s children.  She is also the grandmother of Joseph’s great-grandchick.

There is one albatross from another residential neighborhood:

KP515, Bad Mama’s mate.

• 515 is a good parent, but most years his mate, “Bad Mama,” abandons their egg.
• If I could, I would match him up with a nearby female who raised her chick single-handed for most of last season, after her mate failed to return during incubation.  This is highly unusual, chicks with one parent usually die of dehydration/malnutrition/exposure.

It may surprise everyone to know that these birds never listen to my advice.  It is a miracle that Joseph and Elaine got together, and I take no credit.

All of the 5 albatrosses that have returned to Princeville so far are near my house.  The morning of November 12th, I saw the last two.

Gator, age 11, is one of Joseph’s sons.  He nests in the same yard where he hatched.  He has raised 2 chicks with his mate.

KP497 was banded as an adult in January of 2004.  He has raised 6 chicks with his mate since then.  They always nest in the same yard.

The third albatross to return to Princeville is Larry, K229.  Larry was named after a Sears repairman.  When I became the data collector here, I decided that homeowners would get to name the chicks that shared their lawns with them.  My neighbors, Roger and C, were seeing the Sears repairman more than  anyone else at the time, so Larry got his name.

Larry

Larry is a local boy, his mothers always nest in my neighborhood.  They periodically have a fertile egg; Larry was one of them.  He hatched in 2007.  He met a local girl, Dora, in 2013.  The following two years their nesting efforts were not successful.  But in the 2015-2016 season, they had Hakari.

Last season, unfortunately, Larry abandoned their egg when it was about 4 weeks old.  Four days later Dora came back and incubated it.  Then she abandoned it for a few days.  She sat on it for a couple of days, then Larry came back and they left the egg for good.  I do not know why Larry abandoned the egg in the first place.  It is not uncommon for a first-time nester to leave the egg; it is less likely that an albatross who has already raised a chick does that.

I will be looking for Dora to join Larry soon.  They are both very young, they have many years of chick rearing ahead of them.  It is my good fortune that they have chosen to raise their chicks about a block away from my house.

When one of my neighbors was first looking for a house here he saw an albatross nesting in the yard of the vacant house across the street from me.  The deal was sealed.  “That’s the one!” he said.  It says a lot about my neighborhood, and even more about my neighbors.