Wandering Albatross
Wandering Albatrosses were fairly common in some places. One day in the Drake Passage, I watched five trailing in the wake of our ship. They go through numerous plumages on the way to adulthood, and within this group of five, I saw four different plumages. There was a Black-browed Albatross flying with them, which showed how much larger the Wandering is -- the wingspan of the Black-browed is 7 to 8 feet, compared to the Wandering whose wingspan is 10 to 12 feet. The adult Wandering has an all white body, and a way to separate them from the similar adult Royal Albatross is that the Wandering always has some black on the tail, even if it is only a few small feather tips. Albatrosses have a small tube on each side of their long bill for excreting salt, while storm-petrels and some of the other seabirds have one tube in the middle. If one gets a close look at the adult Wandering Albatross, there is a mustard yellow swatch behind the eye.
Wandering Albatross
Wandering Albatrosses were fairly common in some places. One day in the Drake Passage, I watched five trailing in the wake of our ship. They go through numerous plumages on the way to adulthood, and within this group of five, I saw four different plumages. There was a Black-browed Albatross flying with them, which showed how much larger the Wandering is -- the wingspan of the Black-browed is 7 to 8 feet, compared to the Wandering whose wingspan is 10 to 12 feet. The adult Wandering has an all white body, and a way to separate them from the similar adult Royal Albatross is that the Wandering always has some black on the tail, even if it is only a few small feather tips. Albatrosses have a small tube on each side of their long bill for excreting salt, while storm-petrels and some of the other seabirds have one tube in the middle. If one gets a close look at the adult Wandering Albatross, there is a mustard yellow swatch behind the eye.