Seabirds: The New Identification Guide

This is the first comprehensive guide to the world’s 435 species of seabirds to be published since the 1983 publication of Harrison’s Seabirds: An Identification Guide. The original edition is considered a classic, it won the British Birds journal award for Bird Book of the Year, and was translated into several languages. This new guide covers all known seabirds, including those recently rediscovered and rarely seen, beginning with seaducks and grebes and ending with cormorants and pelicans. Seabirds: The New Identification Guide gives full treatment to all these species  and is lavishly illustrated and detailed throughout. Larger and more expansive than the first edition, partly reflecting changes in taxonomy and our current state of knowledge, the guide is arranged so that all the information for the one or two species illustrated are on facing pages.

Key points of the book:

• The essential new identification guide to the seabirds of the world.
• 239 superb, full-colour plates with extensive captions and detailed facing-plate identification texts and maps, to enable identification at a glance.
• More than 3,800 full-colour figures with illustrations of distinct subspecies, sexes, ages and morphs, are further supported by in-text identification keys and figures.
• The text covers status and conservation, geographic range, movements and migration, breeding biology and feeding habits, plus identification and latest taxonomic treatments.
• The only seabird guide to cover all known seabird groups and species.
• Seabirders worldwide will find this to be an authoritative, one-of-a-kind publication for use around the globe.

Contents

Preface 7
Acknowledgements 9
Introduction 11
What is a seabird? 11
The basics of seabird ID 16
How to use this book 18
Group introduction & identification 18
Species accounts 18
Distribution maps 19
Abbreviations explained 20
Ageing terminology 20
Glossary of terms 21
Seabird topography 23
Where in the world? 24
Species inventory 28
Systematic accounts 31
Seaducks 32
Grebes 58
Sheathbills 78
Phalaropes 78
Skimmers 79
Gulls 84
Terns & Noddies 192
Skuas & Jaegers 238
Auks 252
Tropicbirds 278
Loons (Divers) 284
Penguins 292
Albatrosses 312
Southern & Northern Storm-petrels 344
Petrels, Shearwaters & Diving-petrels 376
Fulmarine Petrels 377
Blue Petrel & Prions 386
Gadfly Petrels 396
Procellaria Petrels 436
Shearwaters 442
Bulweria-type Petrels 480
Diving-petrels 488
Frigatebirds 494
Gannets & Boobies 504
Cormorants & Shags 518
Pelicans 562
References 573
Index 595