Black-browed Albatross

The Black-browed Albatross is a medium-sized, stocky albatross and the most numerous and widely distributed member of the albatross family. It has a white head and body, dark grey upperwings, and a bright yellow-orange bill tipped with a darker orange-red hook.

Its most distinctive feature is the dark smudge of feathers through and above the eye, giving the bird a permanently stern, "eyebrowed" expression that gives the species its common name.

With a large global population concentrated in colonies around the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, this species is regularly seen following ships and fishing boats far offshore across the Southern Ocean and beyond.

Key field marks

• Dark eyebrow-like stripe through the eye on an otherwise white head
• Bright yellow-orange bill with a darker reddish tip
• White underwing with a broad, ragged black leading and trailing edge

Similar species

• Shy Albatross has a pale grey-yellow bill without the bold orange-red coloring, and a much narrower dark margin on the underwing.
• Campbell Albatross, a close relative sometimes lumped with this species, has pale yellow-brown eyes instead of the dark eyes of the Black-browed Albatross.

Black-browed Albatrosses breed in large colonies on subantarctic and cool-temperate islands across the Southern Hemisphere, with the largest populations centered on the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, along with colonies in the Indian Ocean and off South America. Nests are built as raised mud-and-vegetation pedestals on cliffs and slopes.

Outside the breeding season, birds disperse widely across the Southern Ocean and can wander into the South Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, with occasional vagrants recorded far into the Northern Hemisphere.

Voice

At breeding colonies, Black-browed Albatrosses give loud braying and croaking calls during courtship displays and territorial disputes, but are mostly silent at sea.

Feeding

They feed on fish, squid, and krill taken near the surface, and readily scavenge offal and discards behind fishing vessels, a behavior that has brought them into frequent conflict with longline fishing operations.

Nesting and breeding

Pairs build tall, cone-shaped nests of mud, guano, and vegetation on cliff edges and slopes, returning to the same nest site in successive years. A single egg is laid, and both parents share incubation and chick-feeding duties over several months.