Okay, but does age bring Wisdom?

E37. A bird called Wisdom was banded on Midway Atoll in 1956 and is still laying eggs today, which makes her at least 75 and the oldest known wild bird on the planet. She has also outlived the man who banded her, and most of the scientists who tracked her since. Dr. Etienne Rouby studies long-lived seabirds at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at CU Boulder, working with data from the French sub-Antarctic islands where wandering albatross have been followed for more than half a century. Scott asks him what you can learn from a bird that will outlast your career, your funding, and possibly your field station.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• What a fledgling albatross does for the first five years of its life, and why nobody really knows
• The fishing gear change that pulled a colony back from the brink, and how long it took to see it working
• Why a very good year for female albatross is a very bad year for the males

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

• Snowy Albatross audio contributed by Ted Parker, ML42306
• Black-browed Albatross audio contributed by Jan Hansen, ML650026815