For a Laysan albatross named Wisdom, age is nothing more than just a number. At the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean, the 65-year-old bird has hatched a chick which is at least her sixth one since 2006.

Four years ago, no bird was known to have attained the same maternal feats when scientists initially began squawking loudly regarding Wisdom. The life of an average Laysan albatross comes to an end at less than half her age. Scientists used to think that albatross females, alike other birds, becomes infertile late in life, leading a life without producing chicks.

Certainly, such scientists were quite wrong. This week, biologists at the Bird Banding Laboratory at the US Geological Services Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md, said that the cute chick they noticed peeping out from underneath Wisdom was possibly her 40th chick.

They got aware about it because in 1956 a USGS employee first clasped an aluminum band around the ankle of Wisdom in 1956. Working for the government in 2001, that same biologist took a bird from the many thousands at the atoll, tracing her dated tag to a signature recognized by him as it was his own. That was the time when scientists became giddy and named Wisdom, estimating her age at 49 that time.

A time came when Wisdom was compared to Grandma, a Northern Royal albatross that was 61 years old when she gave birth to a chick. However, now Wisdom is all alone. Since six years nobody has seen Grandma at her nesting ground at Taiaroa Head, New Zealand, and thus she has been presumed dead.

In November, when Wisdom staged a comeback to the atoll at the end of the Hawaiian island chain after her year-long flight across the globe, biologists shook their heads in disbelief. At that time, Bruce G. Peterjohn, chief of the banding lab in Laurel said, "It continues to just blow our minds".

The 65-year-old bird's new baby, believed hatched around February 1, has been dubbed Kukini, which means 'swift messenger' in Hawaiian.