World’s oldest known wild bird, Wisdom, cares for her newly hatched chick at 74

At the age of 74, most of us are focused on being grandparents rather than new parents. This is not the case for 74-year-old mom Wisdom, the oldest known wild bird in the world to lay an egg.

The egg recently hatched to Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, who resides at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) Columbia Pacific Northwest branch shared the news that Wisdom was expecting back in December when she laid her first egg in four years with a new partner.

With age comes experience – she has laid between 50 and 60 eggs and fledged as many as 30 chicks in her lifetime, biologists at the wildfire refuge estimate. This one was special, however, in that it made her the oldest known wild bird in the world to do so.