Laysan albatrosses are flying back to Midway Atoll for a new breeding season, and the refuge staff there are waiting to see if Wisdom will be one of them. Wisdom is a female Laysan albatross that was first banded on Midway in 1956. She’s at least 75 years old, and she’s the oldest known wild bird.
The first albatrosses get to Midway in the second half of October, and most of the others arrive in November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) says. It isn’t clear yet if Wisdom will nest this season, since her last visit to the atoll ended without an egg.
Wisdom was back on Midway by November 18, 2025. Her current partner is a male that is only identified by his band code, EX25, and he arrived about a week after she did. However, on January 13, 2026, the refuge staff confirmed that she hadn’t laid an egg that season.
She did lay an egg the season before. That was in late November 2024, and when the egg hatched at the end of January 2025, Wisdom once again became the oldest known wild bird to hatch a chick. Friends of Midway Atoll says that the chick didn’t fledge.
Who is Wisdom?
Wisdom’s story starts on December 10, 1956. On that day, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist named Chandler Robbins put a band on a Laysan albatross that was incubating an egg on Sand Island. Any bird that was nesting at that time had to be an adult that was at least five years old, so the USFWS puts her age at about 75. Robbins died in 2017, which means that Wisdom has now outlived the man who banded her.
Jon Plissner was the supervisory wildlife biologist at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge until he left the atoll in February 2026. He estimated that Wisdom had laid between 50 and 60 eggs and fledged up to 30 chicks. NPR also reported that she is believed to have flown more than 3 million miles (about 4.8 million kilometers) over the ocean. It’s an estimate and not a measurement, but it does give an idea of a life that has been spent almost entirely at sea.
In 2011, Wisdom survived the tsunami that swept over the atoll. She has also changed partners, since Akeakamai, the male that she nested with for years, hasn’t been seen since 2021.
No other bird in the banding records comes close to her. In 2024, Plissner told NPR that “the next oldest bird we know about currently is just 52 years old.”
Where does Wisdom nest?
Midway is part of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, and its Hawaiian name is Kuaihelani. According to Friends of Midway Atoll, more than 70 percent of the world’s Laysan albatrosses live there. In the 2025-26 season, the refuge counted 589,623 Laysan nests, which was the fourth-highest number on record.
Plissner has also warned that rising seas and stronger storms are flooding part of the habitat where the albatrosses breed. So far, Wisdom has avoided that risk, just like every other risk she has faced in seven decades.
If she does come back and nest, the colony’s calendar gives an idea of what would happen next. Most of the eggs are laid in December, and the chicks hatch in January and February. The young birds leave the island between June and August.
