The default albatross. If you asked someone to draw a seabird with a dark back, white underparts, and a dark eyebrow that looks faintly judgemental, they would probably produce something very close to a black-browed mollymawk. It is not the largest. It is not the rarest. It is simply the one you are most likely to see. This is its own kind of distinction. The bird does not seek fame. It seeks efficiency. It finds both. The dark line through the eye gives the bird a permanent expression of mild disapproval. It looks as if it has just watched you do something foolish and is deciding whether to comment. The bill is yellow with an orange tip. It is bright against the grey head. The wings are long and narrow. They are built for efficiency rather than speed. The design is functional. It serves the purpose. It flies with the mollymawk technique. A series of rapid flaps is followed by a long glide. That distinguishes it from the larger great albatrosses. They lock their wings and barely move them for hours. The black-browed mollymawk works harder. It has to. It is twenty per cent smaller. It cannot afford to be lazy. The effort is constant. The reward is distance. Feeding takes it across the southern oceans. It ranges from South America to Australia. It follows fishing vessels. It takes discards. It dives for squid and fish. Unlike some albatrosses, it scavenges readily. A trawler shooting its net means dinner. But the hooks set astern kill thousands each year. The risk is high. The food is immediate. The bird accepts the trade. Breeding colonies are noisy, crowded, and smell exactly as you would expect. A single egg is laid. Both parents share incubation in shifts of up to three weeks. The chick grows slowly. It fledges at four months. It spends another week on the water before it learns to fly properly. That learning period is dangerous. The chick is too heavy to take off from calm water. It is too inexperienced to read the wind. Many do not survive. The ones that do are tough. The black-browed mollymawk is the only albatross that regularly breeds in the North Atlantic. A small colony exists on the Faroe Islands. It is a colonist. An adventurer. A bird that looked at the traditional albatross range and decided to try something different. The expansion is unusual. It shows flexibility. It shows ambition. In New Zealand waters, it is common but not abundant. Birds from the Campbell Island colony roam widely. They mix with other mollymawks. Distinguishing them requires a good look at the face. The eyebrow is the giveaway. It is dark, sharp, and slightly ominous. The expression remains. The bird carries on. It patrols the waves. It watches the ships. It waits for the discard. It keeps going.