Wandering Albatross

The wandering albatross is the largest of all albatrosses, and its wingspan is the longest recorded for any living bird. Some individuals are thought to circle the entire Southern Ocean three times in a single year, logging more than 120,000 km on the wing, so the bird trailing your ship on one crossing may already have circumnavigated the globe more than once.

It turns up reliably wherever the Southern Ocean opens out, which on most itineraries means the open water of the Drake Passage and the Scotia Sea, and around the cliffs and tussock grass of South Georgia, where it nests. It is also a familiar shape off the Falkland Islands, through the Beagle Channel, and rounding Cape Horn, gliding on locked wings for long stretches without a single beat.

Until recently it was lumped together with the closely related Tristan and Antipodean albatrosses as one species; together with the Amsterdam albatross they still form what ornithologists call the wandering albatross complex. On deck the distinction hardly matters, what stands out is the sheer scale of the bird and its apparent indifference to wind, weather, or the size of your ship.