The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates Wisdom the albatross is about 64 years old, the oldest known wild bird in the world. Oh and also? She’s close to hatching and raising yet another chick.
First tagged by scientists at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in 1956 when she was around five years old, Wisdom has logged as many as 6 million miles of ocean flight in her lifetime. She’s raised chicks six times since 2006—Laysan albatrosses only lay one egg a year, which they spend more than four months incubating. The chick on the way would be somewhere around number 37 for Wisdom.
