Endangered
Amsterdam Albatross
Diomedea amsterdamensis
The Amsterdam albatross or Amsterdam Island albatross, is a large albatross that breeds only on Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean.
Appearance
The Amsterdam albatross is a great albatross that breeds in brown, rather than in the more usual white, plumage. The adult bird has chocolate brown upper parts and is white on its face mask, throat, lower breast, and belly. It has a broad brown breast band along with brown undertail coverts.
This bird weighs 4.8 to 8 kg (11–18 lb) and is 107 to 122 cm (42–48 in) long with a wingspan of 280 to 340 cm (110–130 in).
Published measurements include mass about 6.97.
It was only described in 1983, and was thought by some researchers to be a subspecies of the wandering albatross, D. Exulans (now the snowy albatross).
Range and habitat
The Amsterdam albatross breeds only on Amsterdam Island, part of the French Southern Territories in the southern Indian Ocean, at an altitude of between 500–600 m (1,600–2,000 ft) above sea level on the Plateau des Tourbières. The Amsterdam albatross or Amsterdam Island albatross, is a large albatross that breeds only on Amsterdam Island in the southern Indian Ocean.
The island on that the albatross breeds has undergone a significant decline in habitat condition due to the introduction of ship rats, feral cats and cattle, while the birds are threatened at sea by the practice of longline fishing. Feral cattle were eliminated from Amsterdam Island in 2010.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Because of its rarity, the feeding ecology and at-sea distribution of the Amsterdam albatross is not well understood, although it is believed that the birds eat squid, crustaceans, and fish. Off-duty birds during the incubation stage of the breeding cycle cover large areas of the Indian Ocean, traveling up to 2,400 km (1,500 mi).
Amsterdam albatrosses breed biennially in the open marshy ground. Both parents incubate the egg in alternate stints that last for about a week, with the chick hatching after 80 days.
In crisis
The Amsterdam albatross is listed as endangered by the IUCN, with an occurrence range of 4,400,000 km2 (1,700,000 sq mi) and a breeding range of only 7 km2 (2.7 sq mi). The population upon discovery was just five breeding pairs. With conservation, this has increased to eighteen to twenty-five breeding pairs. Monitored continuously since 1983, the world population is estimated at 80 mature individuals and a total of some 130 birds.
Albatrosses (family Diomedeidae) are highly sensitive to adverse population effects since they are very long-lived seabirds with low fecundity and delayed sexual maturity. The worldwide decline of albatross populations coincided with the development of industrial long-line fisheries.
Amsterdam Albatross is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Amsterdam albatross, Wikidata item Q240962. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
