Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World (Princeton Field Guides)

Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World (Princeton Field Guides) | Derek Onley, Paul Scofield | A significant contribution

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Albatrosses, Petre...

	Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World (Princeton Field Guides) Derek Onley, Paul Scofield Princeton University Press, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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This is the first comprehensive field guide to the world's 136 species of albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, storm petrels, and diving petrels. Because many of these birds spend most of their lives far from the coast, traveling from ocean to ocean in a constant search for food, they are poorly known, enigmatic, and often hard to identify in the field. This guide will make field identification much easier. It illustrates every species and shows the distinct plumages of each. It contains 46 high-quality color plates opposite concise descriptions and a color distribution map, with more complete species descriptions following. Species are illustrated on the same page as their confusion species, allowing direct comparisons for more accurate identifications.

This field guide includes information on breeding, feeding, distribution, migration, and conservation. And it illustrates for the first time several extremely rare species, such as Beck's and MacGillivray's Petrels, and the New Zealand Storm-Petrel, which was rediscovered only in 2004.

Seabird watchers will find this an indispensable field guide for use around the world.

A comprehensive guide to all 136 species of open-ocean seabirds, with subspecies and morphs fully illustrated Designed for field use, with concise information opposite plates, and close- and long-range identification tips Confusion species included on plates to aid accurate identification Detailed species accounts, including a color distribution map for each species Full treatment of recently rediscovered and rarely seen species

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Must have book for pelagic birders

I bought this book as a replacement for my older Peter Harrison's book on Seabirds. That book is good, but is somewhat outdated and too large for the field.

This book is much smaller, as it only covers the procellariform birds, and much more field friendly. As such, it makes a good pelagic field guide rather than just a desk reference.

The plates are nice and show several views and plumages of each species.
The maps are good, the text concise and readable with good references and comparisons with similar species.

For the inexperienced pelagic birder, there is a good discussion of approaches to pelagic birding and challenges that this specialized type of birding presents. For the experienced seabirder, there are tables of measurement data for certain problematic groups (Little Shearwaters, Prions, etc.) and a good discussion of plumage variation in the "Wandering" Albatrosses.

I think this book will provide a good introduction to the challenges of pelagic species identification as well as being an indispensable book for the pelagic birder. And all this comes at a reasonable price.

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A significant contribution

A very useful and well illustrated book. A must for the expert and amateur alike. Easy to use and well laid out, it is essential reading for those of us who go to sea with our eyes open to the nature around us

Good book, but you may or may not need it

The illustrations are very nice, but with one drawback. All species are shown in-flight, but only one or two are shown on the water. Granted, the majority of sightings of these birds will be on the wing, but it still seems like an oversight and missed opportunity.
If you go on many pelagic trips and are constantly looking for new species, then this book is definitely for you.
But for those who only occasionally go out to sea and also have a good general field guide, you can skip this one. For instance, the Sibley Guide should be sufficient for most North American birders, on most trips. But if the region's general field guide does not adequately cover this group of birds, then this one would be a great aide on any boat trip.

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