Black-footed Albatross?! This one was on the smaller side, and another person on the boat identified this bird from a band on the leg (not visible) as one coming from Midway Atoll or another Island in the Northwestern Hawaiian Chain (Wake, Laysan, Kure, or Kaula would be the others in the chain that they nest on), which means this bird is well over 2,600 miles from home. There are transplant breeders to Guadeloupe Island in Mexico, which is significantly closer to San Diego, but they have different bands. Despite being so far away, it isn’t necessarily rare to see one coming from nesting grounds to forage off the coast, ive seen them other times too, just haven’t gotten a picture before.
