The Rarest of the Rare

by Diane Ackerman

  A particularly lovely female with a bill the sultry coral of a Bahamian sunset opens up her downy wings and preens them gently. Every single feather has a nerve ending she can use. I try to imagine what it would be like if I could put my arm out and twitch each hair separately. A male approaches her, and suddenly she spreads out the white skirts of her wings and curtseys to him. He curtseys back. Then he reaches with his bill and brushes up a few of the feathers on her breast. This drives her wild. She slides her bill down along the side of his and starts delicately kissing the small feathers at the base of it. He does the same to her, and they pull back a few inches and start a crescendo of clacking that sounds like a spoon hitting hollow wood—castanets. They roll their heads together from side to side, as if packing an imaginary snowball. He rocks forward onto his toes, aching toward her, and presses his chest out like a sail in a strong blow; she does the same. Suddenly they toss their heads skyward, stretch their necks long in mutual yearning, quiver and flap and trumpet to high heavens.

  Their wild, otherworldly music drifts across the grass, half whinny, half moo, like “the surrealistic lowing of cattle,” as Peter describes it. Next they do a “Groucho walk” around each other—a low-down strut with their shoulders hunched—and then they face each other and start to curtsey again. While this erotic minuet continues, dozens of black-footed albatrosses, a darker and less extravagant-looking species nesting nearby, engage in more modest courtship dances of their own, in which they sound like speeding cars screeching around tight curves.

  All at once, a white short-tailed albatross sails in off the ocean, flies a wide spiral around the colonies, banks and tilts with fluent grace, and begins what’s called reefing. Arching its chest, it pulls the huge sails of its wings in halfway, lets its big feet hang down like a plane’s undercarriage, ruffles up its tail feathers as a sort of air brake, and tries to slow down enough to land. Round and round it flies, soaring and reefing, swooping low and funneling high, with an eloquence that leaves us gaping, not quite sure on which pass it will lose flying speed and touch down at last. The sunlight shines through its yellow feet, as if through the paper panes on a sliding door in a Japanese house.

  “Kirei,” I say, more an exhalation than a word. It is Japanese for “beautiful.” And I mean all of it: the heat mirage, like a transparent curtain of shot silk between us and the colonies; the nesting birds, perfect as alabaster statues; the ceremonial square dance of the courting pairs; the incoming bird whirling low and then climbing into steep registers of sky, where it half-swoons like the high notes of a saxophone solo.

  “Kirei,” Hiroshi says quietly, his eyes also following the hypnotic flight of the albatross, which twitches its tail a few times.

  “Why are they called short-tailed albatrosses?” I ask. “Their tails don’t look unreasonably short.” Without shifting their gaze, Hiroshi and Peter smile.

  “It’s because of the way their feet stick out,” Peter explains. “A large bird needs long legs and big feet for takeoffs from water. In fact, sometimes, if the wind isn’t quite right, they’ll run for about fifty yards or so and give up. The tail appears smaller than it really is, but that’s an illusion. They could just as well be called the long-legged albatross.”

  “It would perhaps be better to call them by their other name—Steller’s albatross,” Hiroshi says. “Especially since a number of the animals named by Steller—who was a great naturalist—have now become extinct.” Pulling a notebook from his pocket, Hiroshi begins taking the year’s census of birds, eggs, mated pairs. Peter takes out his sketchbook and soon fills two pages with courting pairs of albatrosses caught in the midst of telltale gestures. An albatross passes over our heads, and the wind rushing loudly through its feathers sounds exactly like the distant roar of a 747. At last it reefs in low over the high village, stretches its feet down even farther, as if somehow to telescope them to the ground, does a head-to-toe twitch arpeggio with umbrellaed wings, and lands in a series of recovered falls, which ends only when it somersaults into a back flop. We laugh. Albatrosses are great courtiers, great aerobats, but also great buffoons.

  By midafternoon, the birds who spent the morning feeding at sea return to their colonies. One by one, they enter the fortress skies to form a giant “kettle” overhead—a bubbling of birds. As one dives down, finds a calm, drops anchor, and lands, another slips in on top of the thick stew of albatrosses now circling, angling, diving, wheeling, sliding across the sky. Wings spread, they make black crosses against the silver sea. An albatross sails in low over our heads, drops its feet, reefs in its wings, cuts close to the ground, only to be lifted again by an updraft. It spreads its wings and sails around for another try, misses again, sails around once more, braking with its feet, swooping and turning, in desper ation heading in close to the cliff face to get a stall effect, which finally works. In twenty attempts at landing, it did not flap its wings even once.

  The albatrosses seem so safe and at ease in this rocky cloister. Every one of them is descended from a few who were at sea when their brethren were killed. Once young birds are fledged, they go to sea and will remain there for from three to five years. Some young birds that had left the island, escaping both the bludgeoning by the feather hunters and the volcanic eruptions, were the progenitors of all the birds we see today. If, unlike other albatrosses, these birds are wary of humans, it’s understandable. Fowlers started coming to Torishima in 1897 to harvest the feathers, and by 1900 there was a thriving settlement of 300 people. When the volcano erupted in 1902, there were 125 people in the village, and all of them died under a boiling mantle of lava. But other fowlers came to replace them, and continued arriving until the 1920s, when there were no longer enough albatrosses to make a permanent village worthwhile. In 1933, a Japanese edict declared Torishima off-limits. But in 1932 the fowlers, knowing that they were soon going to lose a favorite hunting ground, set out for one final slaughter. This massacre reduced the number of birds from a workable breeding stock of about two thousand to only thirty to fifty individuals. In 1939, the volcano erupted again for the second time in this century. The Moon Desert, which had once been a favorite nesting ground of the short-tailed albatross, was charred to blowing cinders. During World War II, the government built a garrison on the island, and the men reported sighting only one albatross. In 1949, Oliver Austin, an American ornithologist, circumnavigated the island in a Japanese whaler but did not see any albatrosses at all, and he believed the bird to be extinct. In fact, there must have been a few hidden nests, perhaps no more than four or five. A few birds were spotted in 1950. In the autumn of 1965 there were many earthquakes, and the personnel from the weather station were evacuated.

  Alone at last in their stone citadel, the impoverished family of short-tailed albatrosses gradually began to rally. Conservationists made sure the species was internationally recognized as endan gered by the International Council for Bird Preservation, which held a congress in Tokyo in 1960. This led the Japanese government to designate the short-tailed albatross a national monument in 1962. When Hiroshi became involved with the project, he threw himself into it like a dynamo. On November 17, 1976, he made his first trip to Torishima, and he has returned at least twice a year ever since, to study the birds, monitor their progress, and do what he can to help them recover. In 1956, there were just twelve reported nests. But in 1988, eighty-nine eggs were laid.

  This may sound like a success story. But short-tailed albatrosses are still desperately endangered. If the volcano should erupt again, as it could at any time, and the area where we now sit should be destroyed, it is unlikely that the albatrosses would be able to nest anywhere else on the island. Breeding would stop. So it is crucial that the albatrosses be attracted to as many other sites as possible. Hiroshi hopes that if the birds can be persuaded to multiply well on Torishima, they will seek nesting colonies on other islands, too. On the leeward Hawaiian islands, short-tailed albatrosses have been spotted sitting alongside black-footed and Laysan albatrosses; and t
hey have been seen on Minami-Kojima in the Senkaku Islands. But they haven’t been seen nesting in either locale.

  Although Hiroshi has been their knight errant and keen observer, the short-tailed albatrosses remain a feathered mystery. Because there are so few birds, it’s difficult even to chart their seasonal movements. But we do have a few scraps of information about their habits, in particular, and much more is known about the habits of albatrosses in general. In early October, the short-tailed albatrosses return to Torishima and congregate offshore for a few days, and then start landing on this small platform at the base of the cliffs. Albatrosses live long lives—on the average, from forty to sixty years. Each bird one sees is a long-term inhabitant of the planet. They are monogamous, and a pair will rendezvous at the previous year’s nest site. A young bird will return to the island after two or three years at sea and begin the baroque courtship display that ensures a tight pair bonding. Young birds may not understand how to copulate, but they often try it anyway, even if it means sitting on the head instead of the tail by mistake. What they’re doing in their early years is practicing romance and learning how to set up a home. The courtship display—which they must perfect to such a razor-fine finesse that they can dance in unison as one rapture, one yearning—is necessary to bring the pair to a pitch of arousal where copulation can occur. Intercourse itself lasts only about thirty or forty seconds in albatrosses. The extravagant buildup is everything.

  When the pairs go to sea, they don’t stick together; and individuals may fly as far as the west coast of North America or the Bering Sea. The male returns two to four days ahead of the female, recognizes her on sight, and greets her with ceremonial bows. Then they indulge in courtship rituals for a few weeks, and she lays an egg in late October or early November. She lays only one egg per season—a large, dull white egg about six times the size of a chicken egg, which weighs around three quarters of a pound—and incubation lasts sixty-four or sixty-five days. The female usually sits on the egg for about three weeks, and then the male eagerly spells her and sits for about twenty-two days. During this time, the parent stands up and turns the egg every few hours. Of course, it can’t leave the nest to eat or drink. During that long fast the albatross can lose around 20 percent of its weight. The female relieves the male for another twenty-two-day shift. As the day of hatching approaches, the two birds get very excited, almost pushing each other off the nest, as if each wants to be the one to finally hatch the egg. This is also a period of heavy billing, preening, and nuzzling.

  After the egg hatches, one of the adults always stands guard to brood the chick and protect it from the ravages of the elements—sun, dust, storms, and so on—as well as from would-be predators. There aren’t enough albatrosses left on Torishima to sustain a population of serious predators, but in the old days, jungle crows and ticks accounted for about a third of all chick deaths. These days the culprit is mainly inexperience. Birds sometimes accidentally knock an egg out of the nest, and once that egg is out, it might as well be a sock or a snowball—the bird has no idea what it is and won’t retrieve it.

  All albatrosses feed their young by regurgitation. The parents fly over the ocean at night and fish for shrimp and squid, which come to the surface and leave a wide, luminous trail behind them. Albatrosses do not feed on the wing, though. When one sees prey, it skids to a halt in the water, simply paddles like a barnyard duck, and with one deft movement of its long hooked bill, snatches up the morsel. Sky-roaming nomads, they feed farther from their chicks than any other birds. Indeed, some color-coded albatrosses have been recorded feeding 2,400 miles from their nesting site. They may take to the ocean to forage for up to fourteen days at a time, storing the partly digested food in a special hamper at the top of the stomach. When they return, they regurgitate food to their chicks. After two or three weeks both parents are needed to feed the chick, whose demands grow, but by that time the chick can safely be left alone while the adults go off to feed.

  By May or June, the adult albatrosses gradually start to lose interest in parenthood, and they desert the plump young chick, which now looks like a rangy brown volcano. Sometimes a chick will sit around on the island for two weeks, losing weight and testing its wings, until at last, unaided, untutored, it sets off on its first flight. In Hiroshi’s office we saw a film he made of a chick taking its first flight with much clumsy stumbling and trepidation. Facing into the wind, it sprinted with its big feet across the slopes of Torishima, wings out, running for forty yards or so, until suddenly its wobbly legs began to dance, its wings floated like a parasol on a windy street, and with a wild-eyed look of self-astonishment, it coasted out over the sea. How poignant it must be for Hiroshi to watch his avian family fly, year after year, knowing that he’s not going to see the chicks again for at least two years, and possibly not for four or five years.

  When the light starts to fail at day’s end, we reluctantly pack up to leave. Soon the cliffs will be full of nesting shadows, and climbing back up to the land of humans will be too difficult. We must go, but we would prefer to stay, camped out at the edge of this natural stage, watching albatrosses coast among the Gothic spires of rock. Being close to albatrosses is an experience somewhere between the spiritual and the sexual. As their whinnying cries fill the air behind us, we hoist our burdens and start the long climb.

  When we return to camp, we find the government team is back and busy with dinner, so we unpack and take seats around the low table. We laugh when we see the banquet being spread before us; expeditions usually mean canned goods and stale bread. Tonight there is pepper steak, rice, barbecued fish, freshly prepared sushi, and fresh vegetables. Then the cook brings round a platter of cooked limpets. A delicacy, they are dense and gristly, reminding me of the inside of a horse’s hoof—including the stones. Mandarin oranges and beer and strong Japanese spirits follow. Overhead, five bird constellations watch us in silence—the Crane, the Swan, the Phoenix, the Peacock, the Eagle—from their stone-cold aviary among the stars. Peering into the well of night, my gaze tumbles toward deep space, and back in time, toward the first feathery tantrums of the universe. My craft is so small, I think, and the ocean is so wide. Exhausted, at last, from the long day’s rigors, everyone wanders into the bunker, crawls into a sleeping bag, and waits with eyes closed for the generator out back to run down, so that the lightbulb inside the bunker will fade for the night.

  No alarm sounds, but at precisely three minutes to six, all of the men wake up, stretch their arms wide, and then, one by one, drift lazily out of the bunker. The cook yawns, tucks in his shirt, puts a large kettle on the gas burner. We eat breakfast quickly, excited to be heading back to the fortress. Though Hiroshi’s backpack looks even heavier today, he somehow manages to carry it cheerfully, taking the short, slow steps of a man on a long journey with a heavy load. Once more, we climb up past the abandoned weatherstation barracks. The haunting notes of a plover drift across the morning as we hike over the lava lakes and through the fields of yellow chrysanthemums. Today the walk is faster and easier. The journey up is different from the journey down. While we’re fresh, we climb steeply at first, then continue across the lava fields to the lap of Sulfur Peak, where the ground is hot to the touch and sulfur fumes dance in the lengthening light of dawn. Some areas of the earth look raw. Without the volcano, there would be no Torishima, and no refuge for the albatrosses. Throughout the oceans of the world, magma from the molten core of the earth pushes up to form volcanic islands like this one. The molten lava solidifies, becomes more stable, and slowly drifts, while other hot spots produce more volcanic islands, and soon there is a steaming archipelago. This is my first volcano, and I love watching the sulfur fumes dance like djinns.

  As we climb across the pungent fields, I feel the warmth of the island’s molten heart through my boots. Steam, like a dragon’s breath, rises all around us. In the Moon Desert, where the lava sand blows, each footstep leaves a cloud, as if one’s life force were burning right through the soles of one’s feet. Yester
day we left pouches of water at this spot, and I fall to my knees and hold one of them overhead, pour a long gush of water down my throat, and wash the black dust deeper inside me. Then we continue on through the narrow col. Soon we are at the edge of the fortress and begin climbing down. More tentative than yesterday, I find the first rope easier today. At the second, searching out good footholds, I slide down a rock with one foot, carry the second foot around, slide down to another ledge. The next toehold waits below. Stretching, I give the rope a little slack, stretch farther, lower myself, feel toward the spot, then—bang!—the floor shoots away underneath me, and spinning around, I fall backward, my left hand gripping the rope as I smash against sharp rock. Pain butts deep into my back. Below me, Hiroshi has already climbed out of sight. Peter, vigilant nearby, looks calm but ready to spring.

  “I’m hurt,” I call, and the words come out as a long moaning.

  He rushes to me, where, in mid-cliff, I am wedged in a colander of rocks, and he says, “Breathe deeply. That’s better. Get some air in.”

  “I think I’ve cracked a rib.” Looking down at the cliff below, then up at the cliff above, I wonder, How will I get out of here?

  Perched below me, Peter checks the best route down. Although I know it’s going to be painful, I must somehow turn around and hold on to the rope tightly with my left hand. My hands are what will save me. I turn and grasp the rope. That small movement sends lightning forks through my chest and back. Peter calls out footholds.