Black-browed Albatross

Identification

The Black-browed Albatross is a big, rangy seabird with a white body and head, a soft grey-black back and upperwing, and a broad black 'eyebrow' that gives it its name. The bill is a warm orange-yellow with a darker, hooked tip, and there is usually a smudgy grey patch just behind the eye. In flight the long, narrow wings and the white underwing with a thick black trailing edge are distinctive. Young birds show a duller bill, a grey wash on the nape and more black beneath the wing, fading over several years. It is the commonest and most widespread of the mollymawks, the small albatrosses of the southern oceans.

Black-browed Albatrosses are superb dynamic soarers, locking their wings and riding the wind gradient just above the waves for hours with barely a flap. They feed mostly by surface seizing — snatching fish, squid and krill from the top metre of water — though they can make shallow dives. Their habit of following ships and trawlers has made them vulnerable to longline and trawl bycatch. Breeding happens in dense colonies on remote subantarctic islands, where a single egg is laid in a raised mud-and-grass nest; pairs often skip a year between attempts, and lifelong pair bonds are the rule.

Most birders meet this species on a southern-ocean crossing — the Drake Passage, the Falklands, or around South Georgia — where birds shadow the ship for hours on end. The Falkland Islands hold the world's largest population, and a visit between October and March puts you among them. A single bird famously spent years returning to a gannet colony in the North Sea, so a northern-hemisphere vagrant is not impossible, though always extraordinary. Bring binoculars and be patient: albatrosses cover water fast, and the best views usually come from the stern of a moving vessel.