Albatross overhead!

I'm just off to South America for a sabbatical.

It's not easy to take a good picture of an albatross in flight - when they get close to you they flash by and to focus and get them in the frame is a job for a professional. However I made lots of attempts and looked back at all the fuzzy photos of bits of albatross that were stored on my camera and found one that looked promising - and here it is - the rear end of an albatross! This is a Royal Northern Albatross with a wingspan of three metres. There are around twenty different species of albatross worldwide and they breed once every two years on various remote islands in the Pacific and Southern Indian and Atlantic oceans and spend the intervening year and a half at sea constantly flying who knows where! The only one that breeds on anything like the mainland anywhere is the Royal Northern who makes it's nest on a fairly inaccessible peninsula close to Dunedin on New Zealand's South Island.

Slow down - I can't keep up!

Here's a more professional photo of the Royal Northern Albatross with a seagull flying in formation alongside to show how big the albatross is! We saw several of these magnificent birds in the fading light before dusk - one of the most impressive sights we've seen on our travels! I wonder if somewhere there's an institution called the Royal Northern Albatross Golf Club where the golfers are so good that they don't just get Birdie's (1 under par) or Eagles (2 under par) but they constantly hit Albatrosses (3 under par)?