Waved Albatross - Also Known As the Galapagos Albatross

The waved albatross is another of the four species of albatrosses that inhabit the Northern Hemisphere (other albatrosses of the Northern Hemisphere include the Laysan albatross, black-footed albatross and the short-tailed ablatross).

The waved albatross breeds on Española Island in the Galapagos Island and spends the rest of the year at sea, foraging over the open ocean, off the coast of Peru and Ecuador. Due to its presence in the Galapagos, the waved albatross has also earned itself another common name: the Galapagos albatross.

Although the Galapagos Archipelago straddles the equator and is therefore well within the tropics, the islands are bathed in the cold Humboldt Current from the south. So in some ways, despite the fact that waved albatrosses forage in the Northern Hemisphere, their range is, well, just barely northern.

Photo © D. Gordon E. Robertson / Wikipedia.