56 | Chapter 4
about 330 km/day; 11,000 km while (relatively!) dawdling in Antarctic
waters, and finally 26,000 km northbound at 520 km/day.
Twitchers, who generate long lists of bird species seen, are notori-
ously competitive. Scientific ornithologists are less so – or is that a false
impression? No sooner had the ink dried on the details of the migra-
tions of the Greenland Arctic Terns than a Dutch group published a
paper entitled ‘Arctic Terns from The Netherlands migrate record dis-
tances across three oceans to Wilkes Land, East Antarctica’.^4 Surely that
title carries more than a hint of one- up- man- ship. While the terns’
routes through the Atlantic were not dissimilar to those of the Green-
land and Iceland birds, the Dutch birds accumulated a total journey
distance 20,000 km greater, about 90,000 km, because they wintered
well to the east of the Weddell Sea off Wilkes Land, which is approxi-
mately south of India. It seems only a matter of time before a study
carried out on Arctic Terns nesting in north- west Russia, and having to
round northern Scandinavia to reach the Atlantic, provides the world
with the first 100,000 km tern journey.
As with the terns where traditional study techniques had given
strong indications of the likely travels, so too with Grey- headed Alba-
trosses. With a head of soothing pearl grey, the species nests at a handful
of localities deep into the Southern Ocean, mostly between 45°S and
55°S. This is a bird that lives life in the relatively slow lane. If successful
in rearing a chick, it takes a sabbatical year away from parental duties
and is absent from the colony for around 18 months before starting
again to breed. Since the species is seen all around Antarctica, there was
every possibility that birds could complete one or more circuits of the
continent in their sabbatical year. It fell to workers from the British
Antarctic Survey, pioneers in the development of geolocators, to test the
possibility, and it was Grey- headed Albatrosses from the colony on Bird
Island, South Georgia, that were the subjects. The albatrosses partly
confirmed and partly confounded expectations.^5
Geolocators retrieved from 22 birds revealed that the peregrinations
in the 18- month sabbatical period fell into one of three groups. Some
albatrosses remained in the south- west Atlantic, using the same marine
areas as South Georgia breeding birds. Some headed east to spend the
southern winter in the south- west Indian Ocean, possibly returning to