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ALBERT the Wandering Albatross
African Birdlife
|July/August 2025
Ahoy, shipmates, grab a pew and let me spin my yarn.
The name's Albert and I'm a Wandering Albatross, king of all seabirds. Many a tale of yore describes how we bring luck to seafarers, and even that we embody the souls of lost sailors.
I'm a proud descendant of the martyred St Albert, shot with a crossbow by the Ancient Mariner while faithfully leading sailors across the Southern Ocean. This murderous act brought disaster to the ship, and its crew responded by tying the dead albatross around their captain's neck to signify his guilt. The slaying of my ancestor was made famous by the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, more than two centuries ago. Ever since, sailors have been wary of deliberately killing our kind, although longline fishing trawlers inadvertently butcher us by the thousand. Alas, humans seldom learn from their mistakes.
This story is from the July/August 2025 edition of African Birdlife.
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