There are many, many Laysan Albatross chicks on the island.
There are about 500,000 here right now. At
the peak of the breeding season there are 1.5 million!
This is a young one. You can see lots of the soft, downy
fur. He's cute here, but they look funnier and funnier until they become
the beautiful adults.
Little bit older.
This one is clearly a little upset about his Elvis-like do.
Older. Cute? ha!
Adult. this is not a great picture of how truly
beautiful these birds are. I'll get one today so you can see.
This is a skeleton of an Albatross. As you can see, there
are several pieces of plastic in it. The birds get their food from
the ocean, so these plastic things floating on the surface apparently
look like food. The parent bird picks it up and feeds it to their young.
Louis found a golf ball on Eastern that had apparently
been fed to a young chick and went through it just fine!
Maybe, not so bright, these birds!?
must be a lot of fun. these birds sure must have big throats to be able to swallow a golf ball
ReplyDeleteYo Greg/Pam/Louis -
ReplyDeleteGreetings from Redding! The previous message was from Jackeroo. -ttk
- tom k.
The amazing thing about the albatross is that every one of them has some varying form and amount of plastic inside. There is so much plastic floating on the ocean, and they are attracted to brightly colored items, mistaking it for food.
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