The world’s oldest wild bird has a new grandchick
Popular Science...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is shining a light on a new member of a famous feathered family—that of the world’s oldest known breeding bird, a Laysan albatross called Wisdom.
The agency posted a video on social media featuring a scruffy looking hatchling seemingly yawning as it hangs out in the sand in close contact with a giant bird—presumably one of its parents. The parent occasionally touches the baby bird with its long beak, and the entire sequence is, rather appropriately, accompanied by the sound of Olivia Dean’s So Easy (To Fall In Love). Indeed, it’s hard not to fall in love with the baby bird.
“This hatchling, recorded earlier this month on the refuge, belongs to Wisdom’s son born in 2011, easily identified with the red tag labeled ‘N333,’ an offshoot of his mother’s legendary ‘Z333’ tag,” reads the video’s caption.
The hatchling’s grandmother is over 70 years old. The seabird was alive during President Eisenhower’s administration and earned the title of being the most elderly wild bird known to experts to lay an egg successfully in 2024. At the time, researchers estimated her to be 74-years-old.
The Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) is a large grey and white seabird with long wings that lives throughout the northern Pacific Ocean. Its habitat is the open ocean, and it mostly eats squid. Laysan albatross usually mate for life. Given Wisdom’s longevity, it doesn’t come as a surprise that she found a new mate after her former one, Akeakamai, went MIA.
Smack dab in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean, the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge on the Midway Atoll islands, where there is also Battle of Midway National Memorial, welcomes the annual return of the largest albatross colony in the world. According to the social media post, Wisdom still returns to the refuge during the nesting season. In fact, she was identified on the Midway Atoll in November 2025.
“Hundreds of thousands of Laysan (mōlī) and black-footed (ka’upu) albatross chicks are currently growing and receiving squid deliveries from their parents on Midway Atoll NWR,” the video caption reads. “As chicks get stronger they will have more independent time and stray further from the nest before eventually fledging in the summer. Once fledged, the young mōlī will spend three to five years at sea before returning to their nesting colony to find a mate.”
Here’s to hoping this adorable grandchick is as long-lived as its grandmother!
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