Salvin's Albatross, Thallasarche salvini
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![]() I was on a pelagic trip out of Half Moon Bay on the Northern California coast on July 26, 2014, when a mostly white albatross was spotted and called out as a Laysan Albatross, the only white albatross normally found in the Northern Hemisphere. Our trip leader, Alvaro Jaramillo, then emerged from the front cabin of the boat and announced "That is not a Laysan Albatross!" It was this bird, a Salvin's Albatross, one of the three species into which the former Shy Albatross of the southern ocean was recently split. The gray bill with a black tip marks this bird as an immature; an adult's bill would be "pale grey-green with a pale yellow upper ridge and a bright yellow tip on the upper mandible, and a dark spot on the tip of the lower mandible" (Wikipedia). Ten years earlier, Alvaro had submitted the recommendation that ultimately led the American Ornithological Union to recognize the split designating Salvin's as a species. Coincidentally, the AOU's acceptance of this recommendation was announced a few days after our encounter with this bird, the first recorded sighting of a Salvin's Albatross in California waters, and only the second in the Northern Hemisphere. |
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![]() The photo above appeared in the December 1916 issue of Western Birds, and the one below appeared on the cover of that issue. |
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![]() The Salvin's interacting with four noticeably smaller Black-footed Albatrosses. |
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