Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ALBATROSSES AND PETRELS

THE ALBATROSSES (Family Diomedeidm)

To those who'' go down to the sea in ships'' one of the marvels is the wonderful power of flight enjoyed by the Albatrosses. On tireless wing, hour after hour, day after day, they”wheel round and round, and forever round the ship — now far behind, now sweeping past in a long rapid survey like a perfect skater on an uneven field of ice.

There is no effort; watch as closely as you will, you rarely or never see a stroke of the mighty pinion. The flight is generally near the water, often close to it. You lose sight of the bird as he disappears in the hollow between the waves, and catch him again as he rises over the crest; but how he rises and whence comes the propelling force is to the eye inexplicable; he merely alters the angle at which the wings are inclined; usually they are parallel to the water and horizontal; but when he turns to ascend or makes a change in his direction, the wings then point at an angle, one to the sky, the other to the water.”— Buller.

While many ingenious theories have been propounded to account for the amazing power which these birds possess of sailing in the air for perhaps an hour at a time without the slightest apparent motion of the expanded wings, we are still without a wholly satisfactory explanation.”

The Albatross has,”says Mr. Lucas,”that type of wing which best fulfils the conditions necessary for an aeroplane, being long and narrow, so that while a full-grown Albatross may spread from ten to twelve feet from tip to tip, this wing is not more than nine inches wide.

This spread of wing is gained by the elongation of the inner bones of the wing and by increasing the number of secondaries, there being about forty of these feathers in the wing of the Albatross."

 

 

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