{"id":344181,"date":"2025-12-14T20:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T20:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/stream-the-beautiful-highs-and-violent-lows-of-albatross-life-with-this-new-24-hour-camera-on-midway-atoll\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T20:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T20:18:12","slug":"stream-the-beautiful-highs-and-violent-lows-of-albatross-life-with-this-new-24-hour-camera-on-midway-atoll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=344181","title":{"rendered":"Stream the Beautiful Highs and Violent Lows of Albatross Life With This New 24-Hour Camera on Midway Atoll"},"content":{"rendered":"


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You can see the large white seabirds dancing, preening, feeding and raising young\u2014though the live feed might show a dark side of island living, too, with potential predation from invasive mice<\/h2>\n
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Joe Spring<\/a><\/p>\n

– Former Associate Editor, Science<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Laysan albatross checks on its egg.
\n Dan Rapp<\/span>
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Ecologist Wieteke Holthuijzen<\/a> has loved birds since she was in grade school. The 33-year-old PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, grew up in a family that treasures science. Her dad was a wildlife ecologist with the electrical utility Idaho Power for decades. Her mom tutors middle and high school students in math and science. The parents took their two daughters outside often and taught them how to identify plants and animals.<\/p>\n

Holthuijzen distinctly remembers the time her dad took her at 9 years old to a bird banding station, where she got to hold a MacGillivray\u2019s warbler<\/a>\u2014and feel its heartbeat pulsing rapidly against her hand. By high school, Holthuijzen had heard about the albatrosses of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> and \u201cWisdom<\/a>,\u201d the oldest known banded bird in the world. She discovered a volunteer research program where students could visit the remote refuge, <\/strong>which is now closed to the public as part of Papah\u0101naumoku\u0101kea Marine National Monument<\/a>, the United States\u2019 largest single protected area. An idea hatched. In college, she saved up by working at the University of Idaho Sustainability Center<\/a> so she could travel to Midway and volunteer for nine months.<\/p>\n

But when she finally flew to the atoll in the middle of the Pacific on a fall night in 2014, Holthuijzen was unprepared for the splendor that greeted her. As the plane landed, she glimpsed what looked like strange little white pillars dotting the ground, all the way up to the runway. When she got out, she realized they were Laysan albatrosses, more than a million of which<\/a> nest on the islands each year. \u201cI\u2019d seen photos of Midway, but I just could not believe [it] \u2026 I was like, \u2018Wow, they literally are carpeting the ground,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cSo, it was very overwhelming, but also the greatest dream of mine was coming true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, everyone can get at a taste of that scale, as the nonprofit Friends of Midway Atoll<\/a> has set up a wildlife camera<\/a> streaming 24-hour live views from Sand Island<\/a>, one of the atoll\u2019s three islands. The camera went public on October 29, and soon, hundreds of the birds showed up. Laysan albatrosses<\/a>, mostly white birds with smoky shading on their faces and six-foot-plus wingspans, dominate the frame. Viewers can watch and listen to a throng of the birds dancing, nesting and calling out with moans, whines and snaps of their bills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve never been to a place like Midway, it\u2019s hard to imagine,\u201d says Friends of Midway Atoll<\/a> board president Wayne Sentman<\/a>, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researcher. \u201cThere\u2019s a million and a half seabirds? That sounds like a really scary Hitchcock movie<\/a>.\u201d But to him, being surrounded by albatrosses is much more pleasant: \u201cImagine if there were 1.5 million puppies running around, because that\u2019s kind of what it feels like.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Midway Atoll NWR Wildlife Live Camera<\/p>\n

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