Maria Gill and Gavin Mouldey have produced a children’s book telling the story of Toroa, the 500th Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi chick to hatch on Taiaroa Head, New Zealand’s mainland breeding site on South Island. ACAP Latest News has reviewed a number of books written about albatrosses for children in the last few years. This is one I particularly like.

Maria Gill, the book’s award-winning author with no less than 62 children’s books to her name and Gavin Mouldey, the illustrator, tell Toroa’s story, starting from a downy chick being fed by his mother, fledging “on a blustery morning” and his subsequent wanderings at sea as a juvenile. On his at-sea journeying he is frightened away by bird-scaring lines deployed behind a longline fishing vessel. He flies on to reach the coast of South America, coming close to the vicinity of a volcanic eruption when in Chilean waters. He then encounters a floating plastic “garbage patch” but escapes after swallowing and then regurgitating a red plastic bottle top.

After five years at sea the Toroa (which means ‘albatross’ in the Maori language) of the book returns to Taiaroa Head, where he finds and courts a partner, and after two years breeds and produces his own chick that successfully fledges. The story is told in short sentences suitable to be read out aloud to a child or for older children to read to themselves. Gavin Mouldey’s evocative paintings fill each page. Novel to my growing collection of albatross books for children, is a four-page wide centre fold with a large illustration of Toroa in flight; a drawing of a human with his arms spread to scale is included to show just how big a royal albatross is.

The real Toroa (click here) hatched in February 2007 and was fitted with a satellite transmitter before fledging in September that year and was then tracked on its at-sea travels for a year (when the instrument stopped reporting) as a juvenile, free-flying albatross. Toroa, like his namesake of the book, is now a successful breeder on Taiaroa Head, returning for the first time in February 2104 and rearing its first chick to fledging in September 2017, keeping the cycle of life continuing and adding to the health of an iconic colony that is accessible to public viewing from an observation centre. This factual information is given in boxes, adding greatly, in my mind, to the book’s value: a parent can use this extra information to add to the illustrated storyline on each page. To me the only partially fictionalized account of a real albatross that is still alive and was breeding successfully less than a year ago adds to the book’s charm and interest.

Toroa as a chick in 2007, photograph by Lyndon Perriman

Toroa returns to Taiaroa Head as an adult for the first time in 2014

An intriguing fact is that one of Toroa’s grandparents was Grandma (all the Taiaroa Head birds carry unique colour bands to allow for individual recognition), the famous Northern Royal Albatross which lived for over 60 years. Perhaps Toroa also has longevity genes (or luck!) and will live a long life.

So, parents – if you want your children to grow up to be albatrossphiles (like this reviewer) then this is the book to get to start them off.

Additional notes for parents and teachers can be found here.  Previous information on the real Toroa in ALN here.

Toroa is not the first real albatross to have a children's book written about it.  Wisdom the famous 60-something Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis of Midway Island was the first (click here for the ALN review).

Reference:

Gill, Maria & Mouldey, Gavin 2017. Toroa’s Journey. Nelson: Potton & Burton. 32 pp. with an eight-page gatefold. ISBN 978 0 947503 53 6. NZ$ 29.99 hardback, NZ$ 19.99 paperback.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 May 2018

Delegates to the Sixth Session of ACAP's Meeting of Parties in the Skukuza Rest Camp, Kruger National Park, South Africa, 7-11 May 2018

Ashley Naidoo (MoP6 Chair), Nathan Walker (Chair, ACAP Advisory Committee) and Marco Favero (ACAP Executive Secretary) confer

Marco Favero (ACAP Executive Secretary) gets interviewed for television...

... as does Nathan Walker (Chair, ACAP Advisory Committee)

South African delegates smile for the camera...

... as does a group of Spanish-speaking delegates

Anton Wolfaardt (ACAP Secretariat) at the white board

Where's Wally?  The ACAP Information Officer's bag is ready to go

All photographs by John Cooper

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 May 2018

ACAP's Sixth Session of  its Meeting of Parties is meeting this week in South Africa's Kruger National Park.  On Monday, the first day of the session, Dr Luthando Dziba, Managing Executive: Conservation Services, South African National Parks, formally welcomed delegates to the Sixth Session of the Meeting of Parties on behalf of the Government of South Africa.  In his address Dr Dziba welcomed all the delegates and observers to South Africa and to the Kruger National Park. He noted that South Africa had previously hosted a meeting of ACAP's Advisory Committee but this was the first time it was hosting a session of the Meeting of Parties. He described the importance of South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Prince Edward Islands for ACAP-listed species, including the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans and the Indian Yellow-nosed Albatross Thalassarche carteri. He referred to research conducted on albatrosses and petrels at the Prince Edward Islands, including the at-sea tracking of albatrosses which showed they ranged widely in the Southern Ocean.

Marco Favero, ACAP Executive Secretary; Ashley Naidoo, MoP6 Chair; Dr Dziba and Nathan Walker, Chair, ACAP Advisory Committee

Dr Dziba chats with South African Delegates after the official opening

Dr Dziba then described the long history and animal populations of and scientific research conducted within the Kruger National Park, drawing attention to the wealth of large mammals that session attendees will be able to view on game drives during the week.  Dr Dziba was thanked for his welcoming remarks and presented with a Wandering Albatross pin as a small token of the meeting’s appreciation.

An elephant in Kruger National Park

Following a fruitful first day of discussions, delegates were hosted by South Africa to an evening and night-time game drive (think elephants, giraffes, hyenas, impala and the odd scrub hare caught in the hand-held spotlights that delegates could wield themselves) followed by a braaivleis, aka barbecue, under candle light in the bush.  A good time was had by all.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 May 2018, updated with photographs 09 May 2018

A juvenile globally Endangered Atlantic Yellow Nosed Albatross Thallassarche chlororhynchos was found dead on 21 April this year by Alan Marques Ribeiro on Geribá Beach, Armação dos Búzios, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during a routine survey as part of a beach monitoring project.  An autopsy was performed by veterinarian Paula Baldassin, upon which a shoe sole was recovered from the bird’s stomach. The sole had resulted in severe ulcers and perforation of the tissue wall, likely causing the bird’s death.

Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross No. 8-88207

Stomach containing part of a shoe

Shoe sole exposed

The dead bird carried SAFRING (South African Bird Ringing Unit) band No. 8-88207, placed on it as a chick in a monitoring colony on Gough Island in the South Atlantic on 15 March. The chick was reported to have fledged between 26 and 31 March 2018, less than a month before its recovery a calculated 3577 km away.

SAFRING report

Read SAFRING reports on the recovery here and here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 May 2018