Wide landscape shot shows thousands of downy gray seabird chicks on simple ground nests, nothing more than small clearings in the green groundcover, with white-chested adults mixed in and trees in the distant background.
Laysan albatross have the best built-in navigation. These incredible seabirds, called mōlī in Hawaiian, fly many thousands of miles across the northern Pacific Ocean, from Alaska to Japan and even Mexico. And when it’s time to nest again, most of them find the tiny Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, locating their precise nesting site from prior years, down to a few feet.
According to the annual survey completed in January, nearly 618,000 active nests were counted on the refuge’s 2.4 square miles of land, with the vast majority being mōlī nests. Midway Atoll NWR is the world’s largest albatross colony.
Once a mōlī pair’s solitary egg is hatched, the unique call of their fledgling can also help the parents find their chick.
As chicks get stronger they will have more independent time and stray further from the nest before eventually fledging in the summer.
By late August, all of the albatross will have fledged and departed for sea. The young mōlī will spend three to five years at sea before returning to their nesting colony to find a forever mate.
Author: Dan Rapp/USFWS Pacific