And I had done a hellish thing,
And I would work’em woe.
For all averre’d, I had killed the Bird
The Makes the Breeze to blow!

Was the old seaman’s lament correct, in Sam Coleridge’s, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner?” (Yes, Clyde, “rime,” not “rhyme.”) Are the birds really the reincarnation of sailors washed overboard? And if you kill one, must you wear the dead critter around your neck, therefore warding off the evil that can befall your ship?

Or are all those stories about the animal’s silly antics actually true? Does it warrant the names “Mollymawk” (Danish), “gooney” (English/American), “Bakadori” (Japanese), all indicating some sort of stupidity or odd behavior and thus make the bird a fool in most people’s eyes?

Regardless of what’s right, harbinger of either bad or good luck, or Simple Simon of the natural world, the Albatross is a good choice for April’s PIAS Bird of the Month.

Actually, “Albatross” is the common term applied to many large sea birds of the family Diomedeiedae in the order Procellariiformes, which includes the petrels as well as the shearwaters. There are 18 species, the largest being the wandering albatross, D. exulans which weighs as much as 17 pounds, with a wing span of over 12 feet and can live more than 30 years. Most have plumage of black and white, but a few possess a bit of brown feathers as well. It is almost impossible to distinguish the sexes of the various birds.

The bills of all albatross are characterized by a hooked upper mandible with long, tubular nostrils protruding from the base. Feet are webbed, but lack a hind claw. All are found mainly at sea in the southern hemisphere from the Howling Fifties and the Roaring Forties of the sub-Antarctic to the Tropics. Some will venture above the equator in the Pacific to U.S. islands such as Wake and Midway, where American birders may observe them, but few have ever been found in the North Atlantic doldrums, the normally windless areas stretching from Africa’s Gulf of Guinea to the mouth of the Amazon in northern Brazil.

Albatross sleep on the ocean’s surface, drink sea water and in their wanderings for food over the vast expanses of ocean, eat cuttlefish, squid, crustaceans, other small sea birds and refuse from ships. They have been known even to attack victims washed overboard, taking the hapless individuals, whether alive or dead, for food.

Nesting grounds vary from crags in rocky cliffs to sandy depressions on atoll-type islands. The birds’ breed only after seven years, the males courting the females in a stylized ritual dance that gives rise to the belief the birds are mentally retarded. A single egg is laid in a cuplike nest of mud, each sex incubating it for a period that lasts up to 81 days, in the case of the larger birds. When the chick hatches, both parents fly off to search for food. When they return, usually after more than ten days, they regurgitate their catch and feed the young a huge meal. This process can be carried on for as long as eight or nine months, the maturing chick being left alone during the parents’ long absences. Since it takes so long for the young to reach adulthood, albatross mate only once every other year. And before it is old enough to reproduce, a young albatross in the Western Drift may circle the Earth several times prior to settling down and raising a family.

While all species of albatross possess wing spans greater in proportion to their bodies than that of other birds, none have enough strength in the muscles of these appendages to take flight with ease. They must, therefore, rely on a lift off from the ground by using a running start or by dropping from an elevation and catching a current of wind. Once in the air, however, they become a picture of grace and ease, sometimes cruising for miles, dipping and swooping through the drafts and thermal eddies, without any movement of their wings.

Albatross have no natural enemies, predators usually not inhabiting their remote breeding grounds. They show no fear of man and the young chicks, looking like balls of brownish-gray down, walk right up to humans for easy handling. Only bored sailors catching the mature adults on baited hooks or military aircraft smashing into them in flight seem to disrupt their numbers, now that the gates have been slammed shut on the millinery trade where the creatures’ wings were once favored as decorations for 19th Century fashionable women’s’ hats.