Yesterday we posted about Wisdom, an albatross who is at least 70 years old, who recently hatched another chick, making it the oldest breeding bird in recorded history. In a comment on the post, Irwin Bryan pointed out a video that has gone viral of an albatross making a less than perfect landing at the Otago’s Royal Albatross Centre nature reserve in New Zealand, which seems like a perfect post for a Monday.

Albatross fails landing attempt at nature reserve

What I find interesting is that whatever, their abilities while landing may be, albatross are amazing flyers. Some species are capable of flying 500 miles a day at speeds up to 50 miles per hour, cover tens of thousands of miles in their epic oceanic wandering. So, while they are at home in the air, they are remarkably bad at landing. At least the albatross in the viral video appears no worse for the wear after its faceplant rendezvous with terra-firma.

Notwithstanding their landing skills, or lack thereof, how do albatross manage to fly so far and so fast across vast stretches of the sea? A few years ago, scientists managed to figure out how albatross manage to achieve almost effortless flight with a technique dubbed “dynamic soaring“, but using gravity and wind shear. The video below describes how the albatross can be so graceful and effortless a flyer at sea, even if it may have issues when coming in for a landing.

Dynamic Soaring: How the Wandering Albatross Can Fly for Free