Preparing to meet a colony of Northern Royal Albatrosses — or are they albatri — I remembered an image from high school when my English class was studying Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” A sailor wore a dead albatross around his neck as penance.

The poem is one of those prized pieces of literature that cause nothing but anguish to a high school kid looking for a correct answer among clashing symbols. Easier to understand is that the sailor was doing penance for killing the albatross, a symbol of good luck for seamen. You don’t want to destroy  anyone’s good luck charm, particularly when you are out in the elements, battling the forces of nature.

Besides, the albatross is a magnificent and awesome white bird, swooping and gliding with an amazing wing span of about nine feet.

An albatross can fly at speeds up to 75 miles per hour. Take a look at this picture below, from New Zealand in December. (Click on the picture for a better view). Seems to me that some of today’s fastest military jets look a lot like an albatross. There's some symbolism for you.

My good luck was sailing aboard the Celebrity Century cruise ship out of Sydney on a voyage around New Zealand. We stopped at the port of Dunedin for a guided tour to Taiaroa Head (Pukekura to the Maori) on Otago Peninsula.

Taiaroa Head has the only albatross colony of any species on a human-inhabited mainland. As many as 150 albatrosses hang out on the hillside, and as many as 100,000 visitors a year quietly scrunch down into a small, bunker-like viewing station to catch glimpses of these birds in their mating grounds at the Royal Albatross Centre.

Breeding leads to a year at sea

In the breeding cycle at Taiaroa Head, the birds arrive in the spring (that’s fall in the Northern Hemisphere) to make nests. An albatross lays a single egg, in October or November.

For about 80 days in December and January, both parents work to  incubate the chick, which hatches in February. Rearing lasts through July. The chick will leave in September, typically for 4-6 years.

After the chick is gone, empty nester parents usually head out to sea for a gap year before they return to breed again.

Next: Rare yellow eyed penguins breed on Otago Peninsula.

David Molyneaux is editor of TheTravelMavens.com