The world’s oldest known wild bird is hatching a plan to continue her legacy.
Wisdom, a 74-year-old Laysan albatross, just laid her first egg in four years in Hawaii, according to U.S. Wildlife officials.
The queen of seabirds returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean last week and began interacting with a new male partner, the Pacific Region of the US Fish & Wildlife Service said in a post on X on Tuesday.
Wisdom returns to the same nesting site each year to reunite with her mate, and if possible, lay one egg, USFWS Pacific said. This is customary behavior for the Laysan albatross species, called mōlī in Hawaiian.
Each year, millions of them return to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge to nest and raise their young. Wisdom, specifically, has been doing this since the Eisenhower administration, according to a Facebook post from USFWS Pacific.
For decades this wise bird reunited with the same partner, Akeakamai, but he hasn’t been seen for many years, USFWS Pacific said.
Officials aren’t sure how old Wisdom’s new partner is, but said he was given a leg tag last week for future monitoring. By the looks of it in a video USFWS Pacific posted on X, the two wild birds are getting along egg-cellently. Wisdom can be seen rubbing her head against her new partner before he sat down to incubate their egg.
According to USFWS Pacific, he is “quite content” doing so and will remain incubating the egg for about three weeks until Wisdom relieves him.
Jon Plissner, a supervisory wildlife biologist at Midway Atoll NWR, said Wisdom seems to still have the energy and instincts for raising another chick and called her first egg in four years “a special joy.”
“We are optimistic that the egg will hatch,” he said.
Officials estimate that Wisdom has produced 50 to 60 eggs in her lifetime and has mothered as many as 30 chicks.
Wisdom was first identified and banded with number Z333 in 1956 after she laid an egg, according to USFWS Pacific. She would have been around six-years-old at the time, and large seabirds like her aren’t known to breed before age five.
The typical lifespan of a Laysan albatross is 68 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
