A Albatross wings are built for dynamic soaring and can cover as much as 3000 miles per week.
L Life-long partnerships are created between albatrosses.
B By mistake, albatrosses can ingest plastic pollution while foraging in the water.
A Albatrosses are found in the Southern Hemisphere, the North Pacific Ocean, and along the west coast of North America.
T The albatross is a metaphor for a burden that feels like a curse, but historically, it was also a symbol of good luck to sailors.
R Relationships between albatrosses can be female-to-female.
O Only returning to its breeding island every year or two, most of an albatross’s life is spent at sea.
S Soaring takes up at least 85% of an aslbatross’s flight compared to time spent flapping.
S Salt glands allow albatrosses to digest the ocean water.

The most beautiful piece of artwork that I have ever seen was a taxidermy diorama of two rocky mountain elk fighting in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. If I stood there too long, my face would become ridden with snot and a flush of red would take over me. Because I knew, deep in my heart, I had longed to be part of that scene. I was not the vast American wilderness. Not the salvia launched from competing bulls. I’ve never even bore witness to the US’s greatest mountain ranges.

But this is a piece about albatrosses.