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Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The world's oldest known wild bird has laid an egg at the estimated age of 74 on a North Pacific island, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. The wildlife service Pacific region said on social media that Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was seen nesting with a new partner and has laid an egg at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, located on the northwest edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago

Wisdom the albatross, photographed in 2022. Image credit: Keegan Rankin/USFWS The oldest known wild bird – an albatross named Wisdom – has laid an egg at the ripe old age of 74, after finding a new mate earlier this year. Wisdom was first identified and banded by biologists after she laid an egg at Midway Atoll in 1956. As albatrosses do not lay eggs before the age of five, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service now estimates her age to be at least 74 years old. Every year in November, this population of albatrosses returns to Midway Atoll in the...

That gruesome sight in December 2015 soon became a crime scene, one that eventually implicated six students and recent graduates of a prestigious Honolulu prep school whose alumni include former president Barack Obama. While on a camping trip the night before the hiker’s arrival, authorities alleged, the boys and young men had hiked to the Ka’ena Point Natural Area Reserve and mercilessly slaughtered at least 15 Laysan albatrosses, federally protected birds that have been the focus of a 26-year-long conservation effort. Nearly a dozen of their eggs were crushed; six other eggs failed to hatch due to the death of...