Mature Flâneur Down Under

Encounters with Albatrosses (in New Zealand)

Where the big birds nest on the Otago Peninsula

Cheek to beak with an albatross. All photos by Tim Ward (including this selfie)

Whenever the subject of albatrosses comes up in conversation, Teresa (my beloved spouse) and I look at each other and shriek “Albatross!” We do it in the distinct British accent of John Cleese. The absurd Monty Python sketch in which Cleese attempts to sell a dead albatross at a theatre as an intermission snack is seared into our memories. My one other point of reference for the bis of course Coleridge’s epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which the mariner maliciously kills an albatross and is forced to wear its carcass around his neck until he atones for his crime…

Thus, none of my previous encounters with albatrosses have been with live ones. Until now.

Teresa and I stayed for three days on the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand’s South Island. Once, this whole area was a volcano that erupted and left behind a great circular cone of igneous rock. Over millions of years, wind and wave and rain wore…