Albatrosses Around Our Necks

Laura now has a legitimate understanding of how awful it would be to literally have an albatross hanging around her neck.

These birds are huge. When fully mature, they weight up to 7kg (18 pounds) and have a 3 meter (9 foot) wingspan.

But when they're not hanging around your neck, they are extremely docile animals, at the mercy of predators and humans. Which is why their numbers declined drastically in the late 19th and early 20th century upon the introduction of several species of rodents, including rats and stoats, here in New Zealand.

But thankfully some wise Kiwis were able to protect, tend and preserve a colony of albatrosses here at the end of the Otago Peninsula.


Sorry for the distant shots of these birds, but obviously they don't let you get too close to them. These shots were taken of albatrosses at their nests from about fifty feet away.