Albatross facts

You'll impress your friends with these fascinating albatross facts!

Did you know...

• Most birds lay more than one egg at a time - blue tits can lay as many as 14, but albatrosses lay just one egg a year - a big white egg that would fill your hand if you held it.
• Once the chick has hatched, the parents take turns to find food for it. An albatross may fly thousands of miles to catch enough squid and fish, leaving its partner and chick alone for days at a time.
• Albatrosses catch squid and fish from the surface of the water. They have special stomachs that digest some of the food but keep aside a fishy oil, which they vomit back up for their chick when they get back. Yummy!
• Albatrosses spend almost all their lives at sea. They even sleep on the ocean. They swoop around icebergs and glide over mountainous waves searching for food in some of the wildest places on Earth.
• A grey-headed albatross was once recorded flying the whole way round the world in just 46 days.
• The wandering albatross has a wingspan of 3.5 metres - that's more than three times your arm span.
• These awesome birds have been around for a hundred times longer than us human beings, but soon they may all be gone. They are meeting terrible danger out at sea. Sometimes, an adult albatross goes out to sea to find food for its chick, and it comes across the deadliest creatures on the planet - people.