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Tristan Albatross | Diomedea dabbenena
Tristanalbatros | Albatros de Tristán de Acuña
The Tristan Albatross is the smaller, darker sibling species of the Snowy Albatross. Almost the entire world population breeds on Gough Island in the South Atlantic, and part of it forages in the waters off the west coast of southern Africa.
Voice
Largely silent at sea; hoarse croaks when squabbling over food. At the breeding site a display with spread wings, bill clapping and loud groaning whistles as in Snowy Albatross.
Recording: Chris Taylor — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Very large: 107 to 117 cm, with a wingspan of 2.7 to 3.1 m. Structure and pattern as in Snowy Albatross, but slightly smaller, with a shorter bill and a lower, less angular head. The bill is pink with a yellowish tip and no black cutting edge. Juveniles are chocolate brown with a white face; the change to white plumage is slower than in Snowy Albatross, so that even breeding adults are often still brown-flecked on the back and keep a dark upperwing with little white. Females average darker than males. The underwing is white with a black trailing edge and tip.
Confusion species
The Snowy Albatross (Diomedea exulans) is larger and longer-billed; old birds are whiter, with much white on the upperwing. At sea, however, juvenile and immature Snowy Albatrosses are almost impossible to separate from Tristan, so many sightings remain uncertain. The royal albatrosses, Southern (Diomedea epomophora) and Northern (Diomedea sanfordi), have a black cutting edge along the upper mandible and a wholly white body.
Habitat
Open ocean in subtropical and cool temperate waters, especially over deep water and around the Subtropical Front. It feeds mainly on squid and fish, and follows fishing vessels. It breeds in the highlands of Gough, on open, boggy plains with ferns and grass, and like the Snowy Albatross breeds at most every second year.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
It breeds almost only on Gough Island, with a few pairs on Inaccessible Island (Tristan da Cunha). Outside the breeding season it forages across the South Atlantic, from the coast of South America to off the west coast of southern Africa; within the region mainly over deep water off the Western Cape and southern Namibia, rarer around the Agulhas Bank. A few tracked birds travelled into the Indian Ocean and to Australia.
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Seen only on pelagic trips to the shelf edge off Cape Town, in late summer and winter. A brown-flecked great albatross with a relatively short bill is a candidate, but certainty is usually out of reach; note bill length and the amount of white on the upperwing, and photograph the bird side-on.
Conservation status
Critically endangered. On Gough introduced house mice eat most chicks alive, so breeding success is very low; an attempt to eradicate the mice in 2021 did not fully succeed and the mice recovered. In addition adults drown as bycatch in longline fisheries at sea. The world population numbers only a few thousand mature birds.
Scientific name
Diomedea dabbenena | Mathews, 1929
Mathews described the species in 1929 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Diomedea was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Diomedea refers to Diomedes, the Greek hero whose companions, according to myth, were turned into seabirds. dabbenena honours the Italian-Argentine ornithologist Roberto Dabbene (1864–1938), who published widely on the birds of Argentina and the southern oceans. The specimen the first description was based on came from Not given in the source.