Member Article

No romance for lovesick albatross

A lovesick albatross has spent the last 40 years unsuccessfully looking for romance in Scotland, 8,000 miles away from his natural breeding grounds. The lonely bird, dubbed Albert, is thought to have first arrived in Scotland after being blown off course in the South Atlantic in 1967.

He was first seen by bird watchers flying over the Firth of Forth just days before Celtic won the European Cup in 1967. His seven-foot wingspan later took him north to Shetland, where he continued searching in vain for a mate, but experts have told the BBC that Albert had no prospect of finding a female albatross so far from his natural home in Southern Argentina. For the past four decades the giant bird has been engaged in a futile attempt to woo two-foot high gannets on several remote islands.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .