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. ContentsPreface 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