THESE giant baby birds aren鈥檛 potty-training, but waiting to grow strong enough to travel. They bide their time on towering nests meant to keep them safe.
The Chatham albatross (Thalassarche eremita) is one of the rarest and least known albatross species, with only around 5000 breeding pairs left in the world.
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The birds spend most of the year living on the ocean, but as the breeding season begins each August, juveniles and adults return to Te Tara Koi Koia, a small, steep and rocky islet in the Chatham Islands, 800 kilometres east of New Zealand.
The albatrosses use soil, bird faeces and plants to build these stool-like nests, some a metre high, to protect offspring from the weather and sea.
Once the eggs are laid, they take more than two months to hatch. The grey, fluffy chicks that emerge then need another four to five months to become strong enough to fly with their parents.
With such a small population and a single breeding site, conservationists fear these birds will go extinct soon. Rising sea levels caused by climate change are making it harder to find a nesting site that won鈥檛 get washed away.
To try to address this, a new breeding site has been established for these albatrosses. By moving chicks at an early age to a different island that is at less risk of flooding, conservation workers hope they will choose to return to this safer breeding location.
Photographer
Thomas Peschak, National Geographic Creative
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淪it and wait鈥�
