Light-mantled Sooty Albatross

Description:

Smaller sooty-brown albatross (80cm/2.75kg). Sooty-brown head, throat and wings, back from nape to tail ash-grey and underparts brown-grey. It has a quite fine black bill with a light bluish stripe along the lower mandible, a partial white eye ring, brown eye and dull flesh coloured legs and feet.

Habitat:

Circumpolar throughout the Southern Ocean. These images of a bird just south of the Auckland Islands. Red Listed as NT.

Notes:

A solitary breeder, these birds nest biannually. Last image is a cropped one to show the diagnostic light blue line on the lower mandible known as the sulcus.