1. Toroa ingoingo. In 1937 there was one pair on the Peninsula, marked and wrapped by Doctor Lance Richdale, breeding. Better banded, perhaps, than starved, egg-sucked, stuck in ship masts or dismantled for muffs, tobacco pouches, cigarette holders and walking stick handles.
2. Now they flock to the camera like Kardashians and we sit and watch them windswept from our screens.
3. I love the word Mollymawk but they’ll never be royal. To be royal you need a black cutting edge. When you’re Royal and Grandma you get words from David Attenborough and I watch her for 47 minutes and 57 seconds, free on NZ on Screen. Grandma is 67 and her partner 34 and in the albatross world this is clearly fine and whatever. When she lays an egg she sounds like a revving scooter.
4. We drive out along the peninsula in a borrowed car. The signs say 40 or less all the way. At Ōtākou she says this is the place with the best waiata. At the Royal Albatross Centre we do not pay for the Unique Taiaroa Tour (NZ$20-NZ$134) for all ages, nor do we take the Albatross Express or the Private Unique Royal Tour. For fifteen bucks we do not get Loaded Fries (topped with bacon, onion, cheese and bbq sauce). We sit in the borrowed car and watch seagulls wheel. Or is that one, maybe, an albatross? How would we know? It is September 13th.
5. Phenology is the when of when things happen, naturally.
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6. CONSERVATION ADVISORY SCIENCE NOTES No. 48 on THE BREEDING PHENOLOGY OF THE ROYAL ALBATROSS (Diomedeaepomophora sanfordi) 1937-1974 must be cited
thus:
Robertson, C.J.R. and Richdale, L.E., 1993.
The breeding phenology of the Royal Albatross (Diomedea epomophora sanfordi) 1937-1974. Conservation Advisory Science Notes No. 48, Department of Conservation, Wellington. 13p and includes a graph showing the relationship of parental visits to the growth and fledging date of two female Royal Albatross Chicks at Taiaroa Head. It looks like the double mountain effect at sunset in Hāwea on the top and a skyline of new RMA-excluded three storey houses below.
Mean visits, it says. 2-7 a week.
Mean visits makes me think of when I think about limiting how much sushi I’m buying my son when he says let’s have lunch because I’m waiting for the pause in the conversation just before he asks me for money.
From the same text, an exercise in categorisation: Breeding adults. Bereaved breeders. Keeping company. Adolescents.
7. September 14th. The bells of the cathedral ring. Ding ding. Ding ding. Ding ding. Yellow Lime, who has been away for four years, has made it back to Pukekura / Taiaroa Head.
8. wildlifecomputers.com shows a light blue line, shaking out into the ocean, for the deployment of Tiaki (a chick) and a shorter red squiggle, Deploy ID: LGK (her daddy).
When I refresh the screen, Tiaki’s line is longer and red and LGK is nowhere to be seen. Since it is a map of raw location data for display purposes only, there is nowhere to CLICK HERE if you are worried about the disappearance of LGK.
The other tabs I have open are geonet.org.nz/earthquake because there was a tremor half an hour ago that might otherwise have been in my mind. Also Thunderpants and Kowtow because capitalism is terrible but so pretty sometimes. And the Royal Cam of course. Only 26 people are watching right now, but there are millions of viewers. Millions and millions. And millions.
9. This one time in 2019, none of the millions and millions of us could view the cameras for a week, while they got upgraded to night vision by the Cornell University people, and DOC wildlife ranger Sharyn Broni said, “We’re excited to see what albatross get up to in the evenings.” Sharyn is right now superactive on the Royal Cam 2021 discussion and reassuring about the red line and LGK’s disappearance and her Linkedin profile says she’s been Wildlife Ranger, Kaitiaki for 23 years 11 months and I can Sign in for the full experience and Join now to see all activity.
10. I love the word preening. That’s what the albatross is doing right now on the livestream. There are 43 of us watching now. It’s 4.34pm. A couple more albatross zoom in. I buy myself the Kowtow landscape fair trade dress.
LIZ BRESLIN
The Royal Cam is a 24-hour livestream of a Royal albatross nest at Pukekura / Taiaroa Head near Ōtepoti / Dunedin. More than two million people have tuned in since December 2020.
