Many people encounter some sort of bird along their morning commute whether it’s a few pigeons or crows or something more interesting like a hawk or eagle, but only the staff at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge encounter hundreds of thousands of albatross chicks while they’re riding to work.
Millions of seabirds call the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, located in the central Pacific ocean, their home. This year nearly 645,000 albatross nests were counted during an annual nest survey, bringing hundreds of thousands of fluffy albatross chicks to the refuge’s 2.4 square miles of land.
The chicks move out from vegetation onto the roads for increased winds and cooling in hot weather as they grow, allowing them to exercise their wings before taking flight.
“As the wings get stronger, they also start hopping and flapping in windy weather, gradually getting a bit more airborne. Like their parents, they soon learn to run into the wind to get more lift.” – Jon Plissner, supervisory wildlife biologist at the refuge.
Due to the atoll’s minimal road system and frequent “chick traffic”, beach cruiser hbikes are the principal means of transportation. The enormous albatross colony arrives every fall to breed and nest. Now the young chicks will begin to depart for sea.
