The giant albatross / My trip to French Southern and Antartic Lands (2/16)

<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT = "#ABCBBE"> <BR> Here the Master of the islands : the albatross !<BR> It can reach a scale of 3 meters 50 (for only ten kilos) and flight at sea nearly over 10000 km within one week. <BR> This distance seems incredible, but was recently confirmed by some GPS beacon which were attached to some birds.<BR> The education of a chick lasts 8 to 9 months. While one of the parents leaves to search food, the other remains and takes care of the chick. The formation of a couple takes several years. But once formed, this couple breaks only with dead one of the two partners !! (and an albatross can briskly exceeds the 60 years !!)<BR> At the age of one, the young albatross leaves the nest and will not return on "ground" for the coming 5 or 6 years.<BR> As they have a chick every two years, the couple will separate then for a complete year before being coming back to Crozet, exactly at the location of their old nest : this meeting is the occasion of majestic dances, large wings opened, each couple thus reinforcing their link for the years to come...<BR> Crozet hold an impressionant record : this is the palce of the most significant concentration of birds in the world. Nearly 25 million of them come to breed here.<BR> These extra-ordinary density of animals is explained by the unbalance between the vastness of the oceanic surfaces, which are among most productive of the world, and the exiguity of the surfaces of reproduction.<BR> </BODY>