I just came yesterday from vacation and I was very excited to see the albatrosses' (Diomedea [Leptorhynchus] irrorata) eggs. I really would like to be at the right time there when the chicks hatch, and today on Española Island we had a good chance. What a shame that we saw a lot of abandoned albatross eggs; however this is normal behavior for them when they feel that it is not a good year to have chicks. We found this egg in the middle of the trail, and it was of a good size.

Albatrosses abandon eggs, but they also adopt eggs and babies, and the following story tells about that.

I remember the last time, when I saw a blue-footed booby nesting very close to an albatross. It had two chicks, one a week older then the other. The older brother started to bite the small one, and the small one started to move away from the nest to escape. He found the albatross right next door and the albatross started to behave like a father. The funniest was that the albatross was feeding the baby so well that the baby blue-footed booby was getting fat very fast; albatrosses normally feed their babies 2 kilos of fish oil. Well, at the end the small chick grew almost to the same size as the older one, and was watching his brother from its neighbor's nest.

The sad part of this story is that the baby didn't survive -- what a shame, but that is life and natural selection.