A Laysan Albatross moves from the French Frigate Shoals to Kauai

Laysan Albatross FV85 on Kauai, photograph by Hob Osterlund

A Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis with colour band FV85 was recently photographed incubating on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.  The band’s alphanumeric was not from a series known to be used on the island so it was assumed it had come from another breeding locality.

Photographer Hob Osterlund, Founder of the Kauaʻi Albatross Network, contacted the USA’s Bird Banding Laboratory with the bird’s details and heard back with a Certificate of Appreciation “in record time”.  It was metal and colour banded as a chick on 20 June 2009 on Tern Island, French Frigates Shoals in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, some 700 km from Kauai.

The mystery Laysan Albatross on Kauai, photograph by Hob Osterlund

What the albatross was up to and where between 2009 and 2025 is, and is likely to remain, unknown.

Information and photographs from the Facebook page of Hob Osterlund – with thanks.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 12 December 2025