>http://www.absc.usgs.gov/research/seabird_foragefish/photogallery/ index.html
>
>Seabird Picture of the Month, June 2002:
>Laysan Albatross
>photo and text by Chandler Robbins
>
>What makes this picture of a Laysan Albatross and chick unusual is
>that it was taken almost 50 years ago by Chan Robbins on Midway
>Atoll, and the fact that this bird could still be alive today. As
>Chan related in a recent newsletter for the USGS Patuxent Wildlife
>Research Center: "My news of the week is that while looking up band
>numbers of albatrosses that I had recaptured on Midway Atoll in
>February, I discovered that one of them was a Laysan Albatross I
>had initially banded in 1956.
>This bird was incubating an egg when I banded it, indicating that it
>was at least five years old at the time. I had replaced the worn
>band in 1962, and other colleagues had replaced it again in 1985
>and 1993.
>When I gave this bird its 5th sequential band in February 2002 it
>was brooding a healthy chick at the age of at least 51 years. This
>breaks the longevity record for North American birds in the wild,
>the previous record being for this same species at the age of 42
>years 5 months."
>
>A Manx shearwater recently captured and re-banded in England was 50
>years old, and still breeding. The oldest wild seabird ever found
>was a royal albatross that nested in New Zealand and was named
>Grandma. The bird was at least 53 years old when it went missing.
>According to the Guinness Book of Animal Records, the highest ever
>reported age of a bird is an unconfirmed 82 years for a male
>Siberian white crane. Some members of the parrot family are thought
>to have hatched at the end of the 19th century.
>Chandler Robbins is a senior research biologist with the USGS
>Patuxent Wildlife Research Center .
>
>To learn more about other seabirds, browse the Seabird Flash Cards
>on the Seabird Page of this website.
>
>Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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--
Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
1500 N. Warner, #1088
Tacoma, WA 98416-1088
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html