Highlights from the Royal Cam at Taiaroa Head/Pukekura’s Northern Royal Albatross for the 2024/25 breeding season

 
A Northern Royal Albatross beside its chick at Taiaroa Head

Since January 2016 a 24-hour live-streamed camera (the “Royal Cam”) operated by the New Zealand Department of Conservation has brought the fortunes of a breeding pair of Endangered Northern Royal Albatrosses Diomedea sanfordi in the Pukekura/Taiaroa Head Nature Reserve to the interested public.  You can now watch a two-minute video with highlights for the 2024/25 breeding season.

“Join us as we journey across the Pacific Ocean and watch some of the world's largest seabirds raise their tiny chick into a full-sized ocean wanderer.  Here are the Top 5 moments from the Northern Royal Albatross Cam in 2025”

A total of 47 eggs has been laid in the current 2025/26 breeding season.  Of these, two eggs have broken and two deemed infertile, so 43 are viable so far.

“Parents take turns incubating their large, single egg for the long incubation period until the chick hatches.  Incubation stints can be quite short at the beginning and the end of the egg’s incubation but often become quite long during the middle as they need to find enough food for themselves and the new chick to come.  If a parent is on the nest for 13 days, we remove the egg to the incubator room for safe keeping as there is a risk of desertion.  The toroa are happy to incubate a dummy egg.  Hydration and supplementary feeding can be provided to toroa who have been on the nest longer than 15 days.”

Read more about the 2025/26 Royal Cam pair here.

Information from the Facebook groups of the Royal Albatross Centre and Royal Cam Albatross Group New Zealand.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 19 December 2025