A lovelorn albatross has begun its annual search for a mate, little realising that it has been looking in the wrong half of the world for the past 40 years.

The black-browed albatross, named Albert by sympathetic twitchers, should be courting in the South Atlantic but has, once again, been seen on a rocky outcrop between the Outer Hebrides and the Shetland Isles.

It is the third year in a row that Albert has turned up at Sula Sgeir. It is thought he is the same bird that was first spotted in Britain 40 years ago, just before the Summer of Love. Since then he has searched desperately for a soul mate, even to the point of attempting to woo the odd gannet – without success.

The problem is that Albert is scouring the Scottish coastlines when the species is, in fact, native to the South Atlantic, 8,000 miles away.

The lonesome seabird was probably blown over the Equator during a storm in the 1960s and has since wandered the northern hemisphere alone.

This is the third consecutive year Albert has claimed a nesting territory on Sula Sgeir. The uninhabited island is so remote that it is likely he was there for several years before being spotted in 2005. With a seven-foot wingspan, he was seen to have returned this year when a boatload of birdwatch-ers sailed from Ullapool to inspect the site.

It is thought that he is the same individual first seen in Britain when Silence is Golden by the Tremeloes was number one in the charts. On May 18, 1967, a black-browed albatross surprised ornithologists by appearing in the Firth of Forth. It returned in 1968 and again in 1969 when it was so anxious to find a mate that it performed its courtship ritual to gannets.

Three years later Albert had turned his attentions to the gannets in a colony at Hermaness on the Shetland island of Unst – one of Britain’s most northerly points. Despite constant rejection by the unimpressed gannets, Albert was persistent and continued to be sighted at Hermaness until 1995.

Sightings of a black-browed albatross were made over the next decade off the coasts of Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands but never simultaneously, convincing ornithologists that it was the same bird.

Graeme Madge, of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said it was “the most likely option” that the sightings from 1967 to 2007 were of the same albatross. He added that however unlucky in love Albert may be, the fact that he had been flying around the northen hemisphere since the 1960s had probably kept him alive.

In the South Atlantic, black-browed albatross numbers have been ravaged by long-line fishing and few get to reach old age. The species has seen its population crash so sharply that it is now classified as endangered.

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