Grey-headed Albatross

Fascinating facts about the Grey-headed Albatross

• A single egg spends 72 days under the parents’ watch before hatching, showing how the pair invests over two months in each offspring. This long incubation means the chick must grow quickly once born, highlighting the high stakes of each breeding attempt.
• At South Georgia’s Bird Island, a chick is fed an average of 616 g of food every 1.2 days, swelling to around 4,900 g before fledging after 141 days. The massive daily meals illustrate the intense energy demands of raising a large seabird in the open ocean.
• Grey-headed albatrosses can dive to depths of 7 m (23 ft) to chase prey, a rarity among their mostly surface-feeding relatives. This ability lets them tap hidden food sources like squid, expanding their diet beyond the surface layer.
• Tracking of 22 non-breeding birds revealed three movement strategies, including a full circumnavigation of the globe completed in just 46 days, the fastest recorded round-trip for the species. Such voyages underscore the bird’s extraordinary navigation and stamina during years away from the colony.
• The species occupies an occurrence range of 79 million km² yet only 1,800 km² of that is breeding ground, concentrating half the world’s population on South Georgia. This extreme reliance on a tiny area makes the albatross especially vulnerable to local threats, emphasizing the need for focused conservation.

At a glance

About the Grey-headed Albatross

The grey-headed albatross (Thalassarche chrysostoma) cuts an imposing figure over the Southern Ocean, its 81 cm (32 in) body cloaked in a dark ashy-grey head, throat and upper neck that give the bird its name. A wingspan of 2.2 m (7.2 ft) stretches from the almost-black mantle and tail to the striking white rump and underparts, while a white crescent behind the eyes and a bill of black with bright yellow ridges that blush pink-orange at the tip add a flash of colour. Juveniles are darker, bearing a black bill and head and a nearly all-dark underwing, a stark contrast to the adult’s white-streaked flight feathers. These birds are true pelagic specialists, nesting on isolated islands such as South Georgia, the Diego Ramírez, Kerguelen, Crozet, Marion, Prince Edward, Campbell and Macquarie Islands, and then roaming far beyond the Antarctic Polar Frontal Zone to hunt squid, fish, crustacea, carrion, cephalopods and lampreys, krill is a minor part of their diet. They can dive to 7 m (23 ft) when chasing prey, and a single egg incubated for 72 days yields a chick that swells to about 4,900 g (170 oz) after being fed 616 g of food every 1.2 days. After a 141-day fledging period, the young albatross may disappear for six to seven years, and adults that have successfully raised a chick skip breeding the following season, sometimes embarking on a globe-spanning circumnavigation in just 46 days.

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