Caring About a Royal Family

posted by graham on December 08, 2024

In college, I spent a summer doing an independent study on how to make a robot bird that could fly. I watched documentaries, I did wikipedia deep-dives, I learned musculoskeletal structures and how they varied across species, I studied the modes of flight among differently sized and shaped birds, and I looked at the state of the art in ornithopter-design at private robotics companies. I learned that the reason predatory raptors like vultures are often depicted circling overhead in cartoons was to do with the ways that they used static soaring from thermal gradiants to gain altitude without using much of their own energy. I also learned that the bird with the largest wingspan in the world^[1], the albatross, used dynamic soaring to build speed from taking advantage of the boundary of wind gradients. I planned to use slope soaring as a means to achieve lift, since my college had a gradual slope with a prevailing wind, and because it seemed to have the least amoung of moving parts.^[2]

As soon as I learned about the albatross, I was compelled: it's a bird that has trouble taking off compared to other flight-ful birds with smaller wingspans. For this reason, albatrosses tend to live in areas with high prevailing wind-speeds -- often islands with sharp inclines at the coast. I read that one of the main areas in the world that has both albatrosses and everyday human populations is New Zealand. Since then, I've always wanted to go and see one. When we were planning our trip to Aotearoa New Zealand, seeing wild albatrosses was one of the things on my list that I had to do.^[3]

To understand why albatrosses are viewable at the tip of the Otago Peninsula, it helps to understand the history of the area. Per previous posts, Aotearoa was and is a sanctuary for birds because of how and when it was formed geologically. The Māori established the Pukekura pā^[4] on the hilltop at the end of the Otago peninsula in the mid 1600s. Skipping forward a few centuries, Dunedin^[5] was founded by Scottish colonists in the mid 1800s. After gold was discovered in 1861 at Gabriel's Gully, ~80km west of Dunedin, the ensuing gold rush exploded the population. By 1874, Dunedin was the city with the largest population in New Zealand. In the 1880s, fears rose that the Russian government might attack New Zealand at any moment.^[6] With Dunedin as a major target that needed defending, the Pukekura pā was torn down and the peninsula tip was cleared of any remaining trees to make way for Fort Taiaroa, along with an Armstrong Disappearing Gun inside it.

The first albatrosses seen in the area were in the late 1910s. Wildlife experts believe that the clearing of forests and removal of any predators, combined with human-led displacement of albatrosses at other islands nearby to New Zealand is what led them to begin nesting by Fort Taiaroa. Dr. Lance Richdale^[7] was the man credited for helping establish protection for the albatrosses at Taiaroa Head. Part of these efforts eventually included the Royal Albatross Centre and turning the entire Taiaroa Head area into a predator-free zone. Doing so has made it an area where a number of other endangered bird species can roost safely.

The life of a northern royal albatross like the ones I saw starts when two albatrosses mate^[8] and lay an egg. The chick is taken care of by its parents, who alternate staying with the chick to protect it. As it reaches adolescency, chicks will begin the 1000km/day journey over the Pacific Ocean towards the West Coast of Chile. Along the way, these albatrosses also use slope soaring off of the ocean waves themselves as a way to further conserve energy. They drink salt water and their bodies process the excess salt out of it, leading to the remainder coming out the tube-shaped nostrils, down the beak, and off the curved tip as waste. The tubular nostrils are also able to smell their prey from great distances. For Northern Royals, their diet is 80% squid, but generally any small ocean animal near the surface is fair game. They'll make the return trip to Aotearoa and begin mating before continuing to do this commute back and forth pretty much every year for the rest of their lives.

I can't describe how nice it was to finally get to see the albatrosses in real life after all this time. When we first arrived at the viewing area of the Centre -- a small windowed building on the top of the hill -- we could see about three birds sitting by their nests in the grass below. I made quiet peace with the fact that this would be all we got to see of them, and through the binoculars it was really neat to see their feathers and bills as they looked around. But the real highlight for me was when, out of nowhere, we spotted a pair of albatrosses repeatedly soaring by before they too landed to begin nesting. It was exhilarating to see them actually flying in real life.