Why are albatross called gooney birds

Navy through the s, when it created a forward-area base on the atoll. During this period, the Navy killed more than 50, birds with bulldozers and flamethrowers to keep them from flying into their early, underpowered jet aircraft and causing crashes. The number of albatross held more or less steady until the population began climbing in the mids and through the s.

But modern times brought new kinds of problems. Not only are there lighters, but plastic pencils, spools, toy tops, hairpins, combs, tiny lightbulbs, even a small radio tube from the days before transistors.

On Midway, late June or early July is shocking for any visitor who harbors any lingering romantic notions about the albatross. They are waiting for that moment when the chick is gone—out on its own.

For the thousands of gooney bird fledglings, each day more assailed by heat, thirst and hunger, the time has come to fly or die. Or at any rate get the squid that provide them with life-giving food and drink. Fortunately, more than 90 percent will make it. At this stage they are at their gooneyest, with their comical, intense, nearly cross-eyed look, enormous triangular feet, huge wings and long bills.

In the process of shedding the thick gray down from their heads and necks, they acquire ridiculous hairdos. Initially, this can put you in mind of bewigged English magistrates or Cyril Ritchard playing Captain Hook.

Later, if their from-the-top-down shedding is balanced left and right, they wear sideburns. You start out by simply wanting to cheer them on their way, especially when they flail at the air with outsized wings. Standard flight exhortations run to "Go!

As the days grow hotter, with no breeze or rain, the birds are even less mobile. We want to help them. If they move at all in the heat now, it is mostly to shuffle into a nearby patch of shade.

Outside my window in Charlie barracks, a row of ten have edged into the slender shadow of a single telephone pole. But most birds just sit there waiting as the sun burns down upon them. I wonder. Unhappily, their biological makeup prevents them from straying too far away from the spot where they were born, the location to which their parents have brought them food for months on end. The space, lined on its eastern side with tall ironwood trees, is vastly larger than Yankee Stadium.

Evenly spaced at about five-foot intervals, legions of fledgling albatross are stationed there, motionless. Many hundreds of them face away from the sun in concert, like a field of the faithful praying toward Mecca. Birds fairly close to the trees have gravitated into broad strips of shade. There is plenty of room for more, but the multitudes do not stir.

Nothing can be done, of course. There are too many. Up to a thousand a day are dying and are picked up in the wee hours and hauled to the incinerator.

It has to be that way. Fledglings that fly this spring, if they live, will spend two to seven years at sea before returning to Midway to find a mate. Whereas the great frigate bird and sooty tern stay aloft the whole time because their feathers are not weatherproof, the albatross spends as much as half of its time floating on the surface of the ocean, preening, resting and feeding.

Why albatross and all other seabirds exhibit what ornithologists call "deferred breeding" remains one of the biggest mysteries in the biology of these animals.

When the albatross return home from their extensive wanderings, they look for a mate and practice an elaborate head-bobbing courtship dance. While the dance looks absurd and quite gooney, it provides a critical function: each bird is making sure that it is in sync with its potential mate.

Albatross and other seabirds share an unusual trait—males and females split the duties involved in incubating the egg. Over a period of a month or two, the albatross pair must coordinate their comings and goings so the egg is protected from the hot sun. Should one parent stay away too long or both become hungry at the same time, the egg could be in jeopardy.

Individual variations exist among birds, just as they do with humans, and if the parents are not on the same schedule, then problems will occur. Somehow they can discover their compatibility quite accurately during a series of courtship dances.

After the egg hatches, around mid-January, the parents make many trips to sea to feed the chick. Recently, a small telemetric device fastened to a foraging Laysan parent from an island near Midway revealed that it had flown nonstop for 4, miles in search of food for its chick. The albatross digestive system includes a device like those that dairymen use to separate cream from milk. It takes fresh squid and processes it into two separate compartments, one for nourishing oil and the other for everything else.

The energy-rich oil is stored to be fed to chicks back at the nest, while the rest is digested by the adult. The returning father or mother regurgitates breakfast in the form of a ghastly gray gruel.

Many of the 20 other species are not thriving. One reason is relentless and general—decrease in habitat. Read increase in people. Upon returning the mother nudges the male off the nest. Where do male and female albatrosses go? Some albatrosses are tracked by transmitters glued under their back feathers.

Scientists discovered that albatrosses fly hundreds of miles over water seeking the right feeding place. They eat floating fish, squid and flying-fish eggs. Ocean pollution is a big problem for sea life.

How does the albatross take a load of food back to the nest? God created this bird with a two-part digestive tract. The first part digests and separates food. Oil separates from the food and floats. Water and other stuff sink into the second part, becoming the meal for the bird. When a large amount of oily fat is stored the albatross heads for home.

Japanese forces launched a fierce attack on the island in June, , but were intercepted by the U. Navy about miles off the coast. The ensuing Battle of Midway is generally regarded as a turning point in the Pacific War.

Midway continued to play a key strategic role well into the s and the era of the Vietnam War. As recently as , Messing said, there were up to 40, Marines living on the island in tents. Today, a high school that bustled with activity two decades ago is abandoned and old living quarters are derelict. But it is still clear that Midway is part of America. One such group is studying the effect of termites on wood in hope of developing a new preservative to defend against them.

Another group is studying the volcanic development of the Hawaiian archipelago, to which Midway technically belongs. All Sections. About Us.