🕊 Wisdom
Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), known in Hawaiian as mōlī · Kuaihelani / Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, North Pacific Ocean
Lives in Lagoon
Wisdom was banded as an already-breeding adult in 1956, which makes her at least 75 and the oldest known wild bird on Earth. She has nested on the same patch of Midway Atoll for seven decades, and biologists estimate she has laid 50 to 60 eggs, fledged around 30 chicks and flown roughly 3.7 million miles. She became an internet fixture in the 2010s as the US Fish and Wildlife Service posted each annual return, and went properly viral in early 2025 when she hatched a chick at 74 - a bird older than most of the people sharing the video. She came back again in November 2025 for another season.
What they do
Unfolds both enormous narrow wings out flat to their full span, holds, then folds them back down over the nest - a slow three-frame albatross wing-spread..
Unhurried, unbothered, and still turning up every winter like she has somewhere to be.
Lore
- ★First banded in 1956 when she was already an adult sitting on an egg, so 75 is a floor, not an estimate. Her band reads Z333.
- ★Biologists put her lifetime output at 50 to 60 eggs and around 30 fledged chicks, and her lifetime flying at roughly 3.7 million miles.
- ★She laid an egg on 26 November 2024 at age 74; it hatched on 30 January 2025 and she met the chick on 6 February.
- ★She has outlived at least three mates, including her long-term partner Akeakamai, and returned in November 2025 with a new one.
Helping the real one
💛 Support Wisdom via Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife RefugeThe 501(c)(3) that supports the refuge where Wisdom nests and that publishes her annual updates. Donations page fetched and confirmed; tax ID 13-4088762. This opens their own official page. Money never touches this site.
Where this comes from
- Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge Wisdom returns to Kuaihelani, November 2025 ↗
- Smithsonian Magazine Wisdom tends her new chick at age 74 ↗
- Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge Wisdom, the Albatross - species and band record ↗
Every link here was checked twice before it was published. If one is dead or wrong, tell us.