They've Done It Again: An Albatross Chick To the delight of scientists, a pair of lovers returned to Hawaii this year for what might turn out to be an annual sojourn. The two birds are endangered short-tailed albatrosses, and for the second time in the species" recorded history, they nested there, producing a chick on American soil. Most short-tailed albatrosses breed on a volcanic island in Japan, and scientists hope they are seeing the beginning of a new breeding colony that could help ensure the species" survival in the event of a catastrophic eruption. "Because the Japanese population is threatened, it certainly would be desirable for long-term species recovery to establish new populations," said George Wallace, the vice president for oceans and islands at the American Bird Conservancy. Short-tailed albatrosses once numbered in the millions, making them the most abundant albatross species in the North Pacific. Feather hunters decimated the population around the turn of the century, however, and researchers believed by the 1940"s that the species had gone extinct. In the 1950"s, however, scientists discovered 10 breeding pairs on Japan's Torishima Island, a group that has since grown to around 3,000. The birds occasionally visit remote Hawaiian islands, especially Midway Atoll, a speck of land more than 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu where the legendary World War II battle unfolded. The Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge hosts the world's largest colonies of Laysan and black-footed albatrosses as well as millions of other seabirds. It was on this island that the Fish and Wildlife Service personnel found the short-tailed albatross breeding pair last year. Albatrosses tend to be faithful to the place of their birth, returning when they are around 8 years old to rear their own young. Some chicks do disperse, though, so it will be several years before researchers find out whether or not a full-fledged short-tailed American colony is in the making. To encourage the short-tails to settle on the atolls, Fish and Wildlife Service scientists set up plastic model albatross colonies. The friendly decoys had the desired effect, attracting albatrosses that like to hang out around the "little fake birds sitting on the beach," said Dr. Wallace. "The birds are turning up here and there, but I think really the social attraction work looks like it paid off on Midway," he said. Short-tailed albatrosses produce only one egg per year, and their slow reproductive strategy makes them vulnerable to threats. "Albatrosses are not like cardinals that nest in our backyards and produce three or four young twice a season," Dr. Wallace said. As a result, losing birds to fisheries bycatch, natural disasters or the introduction of nonnative predators can deal a major blow to the population. On Midway Atoll, birds are meticulously monitored by wildlife managers, but they still face a number of threats. Adults sometimes pursue baited hooks from long line fisheries, a globally significant cause of albatross deaths. When they snap up the bait, the animals get snagged on the hooks and drown. Introduced predators are always a problem for island ecosystems, and the atolls are no exception. Because albatrosses evolved in the absence of mammalian predators, they never developed defenses against such threats. "Cats have figured out that albatrosses really just sit there and can be taken," said Dr. Wallace, who adds that rats also frequently raid nests. A couple of other problems are unique to the atolls. A fast-growing weed introduced on the islands, golden crownbeard, literally swallows nests up, preventing adults from reaching their starving young. And each year, about 10,000 chicks consume lead-based paint chips peeling off buildings left over from World War II, which causes a fatal condition known as droop wing. Wildlife managers are scrambling to eradicate golden crownbeard and remove the lead chips from the sand and buildings in the hopes of nurturing a new population of short-tailed albatrosses to protecting the millions of other seabirds that nest on the islands.