CAE (Advanced Exam) Listening Test 1

Part 2: The albatross
7 Arabic
8 21/twenty-one
9 (the) wind
10 shoulder(s)
11 smell
12 (little) mice
13 feathers
14 bottle caps/tops

You’ll hear a student called Tim Farnham giving a class presentation about a seabird called the albatross.
For questions 7–14, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase. In the exam, you have 45 seconds to look at Part 2.

Hi. My name’s Tim and the topic of my presentation is a seabird called the albatross. It’s the largest
seabird, and it’s always been a great favourite with sailors. It’s also well-known because it features
in a famous English poem.
The word ‘albatross’ came into the English language via the Portuguese word ‘alcatraz’ that was
used for similar birds called gannets. The famous American prison island was also named after
them. But the real origin of the word is thought to be Arabic, where it means ‘diver’.
There’s lots of different species of albatross, and scientists are always arguing about exactly how
many. Over the years, estimates have varied from thirteen to as many as eighty. Nowadays, a
figure of twenty-one is widely accepted, with nineteen of those identified as being in danger of
extinction.
The albatross is mostly found in the southern hemisphere, and there’s none in the north Atlantic.
The bird travels long distances in search of its food – fish and squid mostly – and depends on the
wind to a great extent. That’s why you rarely find them in tropical areas, where long periods of calm
are common.
The albatross manages to cover such long distances by conserving energy. Apart from take-off and
landing, it rarely flaps its huge wings, and actually there’s a locking mechanism in its shoulder that
keeps the wings in place as it glides through the air.
As you’d expect, the bird’s got good eyesight and will swoop down when it sees signs of food near
the surface of the water. What I didn’t expect to find, however, was that it can also detect the smell
of its food; this explains why it follows fishing boats that use dead fish as bait. Indeed, one of the
reasons the albatross is such an endangered bird is that it tends to get caught up in fishing nets.
Another reason the albatross faces extinction is it takes a long time to reproduce. The bird can live
for sixty years, and only starts breeding from the age of five. Even then, each pair of birds only
produces one egg per year. They build nests on remote uninhabited islands, because animals like
rats, which arrive at the same time as humans, will eat the eggs and, predictably, cats will kill the
chicks. Apparently, even little mice can be a problem at nest sites, which is incredible.
And, of course, the albatross has always been killed by people. Sailors used to eat them, and at
one time their feathers were highly valued, which was actually the main reason. Even the bird’s
bones were used in certain ceremonies by local populations, though that wasn’t on a big scale.
These days, plastic is the biggest enemy, and there’s tons of it in the sea. Eating plastic doesn’t in
itself kill an albatross, but it tends to stay in the stomach and so cut down the amount of food the
bird can digest, which then weakens it. Some dead birds have even been found with weird things
like plastic cigarette lighters and toy soldiers in their stomachs as well as the all too common bottle
caps. There must be a way of stopping those getting into the sea!