Birds of the Oceans and Waterways

Far from Land: the Mysterious Lives of Seabirds. Brooks, M. 2018. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, U.S.A. 249 pp. $29.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-691-17418-1. Oceanic Birds of the World: a Photo Guide. Howell, S.N.G., K. Zufelt. 2019. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, U.S.A. & 358 pp. $35.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-691-17501-0. Ospreys: the Revival of a Global Raptor. Poole, A.F. 2019. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, U.S.A. 205 pp. $39.95. ISBN 978-1-4214-2715-7. I have the great privilege of traveling the world as a guest speaker on board various cruise ships. The most enjoyable part of the job is being on deck with guests to see what seabirds and cetaceans we can spot. Whenever we see a bird in the open ocean, I can expect someone to ask: “What's that bird doing out here, so far from land?” I have to resist the temptation to give the rather impertinent response, “that's why it's called a seabird.” I need to remember that most people—even many birdwatchers—only see seabirds during the short period when they are ashore to breed on some rugged cliff or offshore island and assume that is how the birds spend their entire year. I have adopted different examples to emphasize the truly oceanic nature of many seabirds, which spend long periods of their lives at sea, sleeping on the sea or dozing on the wing, without ever needing to return to land. Far from Land gives me the statistics to back up my assertion. For example, it tells me that young Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedia exulans complex), after they fledge and leave their nests, can travel up to 184,000 km during their first year at sea, probably without ever touching land—equivalent to flying four times around the world. We need to understand the lives of seabirds at sea before we can properly conserve them, and the book describes how rapidly knowledge of their movements has advanced over the last 30 years. Before that, our understanding came largely from ringing (banding) recoveries. Birds were tagged at a breeding site, and recovery of the tag told us where they returned to breed or where they died, but nothing of what happened in between. Landlubber biologists have been able to use VHF telemetry to follow the movement of large mammals or terrestrial birds since the 1950s, but the technique was useless for birds that wandered widely over stormy seas. In 1989 satellite telemetry was used for the first time to study seabird movements, but, with the first devices weighing 180 g, they were only useful on large species like albatrosses. Today, the smallest satellite trackers have been miniaturized to a mere 5 g, so they can be used on birds of as little as 100 g in body mass. The global positioning satellite (GPS) system has vastly refined their accuracy, and more sophisticated geologgers can assess when the birds are in flight, resting on the surface, or diving for food. Even miniature cameras can be attached to seabirds to study their fishing techniques without interference. Today, as the book shows, seabirds can be followed with the attention that is normally reserved for media personalities – and some of them have become celebrities in their own right, thanks to websites that make their daily movements accessible to all. Among the many intriguing case studies that Far from Land elucidates, we now know that male and female Sabine's Gulls (Xema sabina), which breed together in the Canadian Arctic, spend the winter in completely separate feeding grounds off Peru and South Africa and that Arctic Terns (Sterna paradisaea) on migration south from Alaska may sometimes fly over the Andes to avoid stormy seas around Cape Horn. One quote neatly captures both the author's elegant writing style and the overall thesis of his book: “Seabirds are not helpless morsels of life that are tossed hither and thither by wind and waves. Rather, they employ strategies that enable them to cover huge distances and detect scattered food with relative ease…” The book is written with wit (e.g., quoting from a scientific presentation given in rap) and real insight, helped by the fact that the author himself is a field ornithologist and understands how much time and effort goes into work that may end up summarized in a sentence in the book. This is a book that all ornithologists should read, but it will also inspire marine biologists, seafarers, and all who travel the seas into deepened respect for the seabirds with which they share the oceans. It has certainly stimulated me to put together a new talk on the subject for my cruise ship guests. Only a tiny proportion of individual birds are ever fitted with electronic trackers, so observations by sea travelers remain important to expand knowledge of seabird dispersal and identify hotspots that might merit status as marine protected areas. That, in turn, requires accurate identification of species, which is often tricky with distant gray birds flying over gray seas beneath leaden skies. It has not helped that there has been no comprehensive field guide to seabirds since Harrison (1983), which is now wildly out of date. Onley and Scofield (2007) partially fills that gap and is my regular companion on cruises, but it only covers albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters (admittedly, the most confusing species to identify). Oceanic Birds of the World: A Photo Guide is therefore a very welcome addition to the maritime library. Photo guide is appropriate in the title, not only because the book relies entirely on photographs to aid identification, but also because I doubt whether anyone in the field, even with the best binoculars, could detect the fine details of plumage on which the book often relies to distinguish species. I would recommend instead that users of the book photograph the seabirds they see, then compare their photos with those in the book to confirm their identity—and, for that use, this book will undoubtedly set a new standard for many years to come. The photos are superb, displayed as sharp cutouts against a neutral, sea-blue background. They are also up-to-date and include fine photos of the Mascarene Petrel (Pseudobulweria aterrima), a species not photographed at sea until 2012. As well as the groups included in Onley and Scofield (2007), the book also covers penguins, auks, tropicbirds, frigatebirds, gannets and boobies, skuas, and jaegers, plus around 19 species of gulls and terns that are truly oceanic and even two ocean-going species of phalaropes. The standard of the 2,200 color photographs is astonishingly high and the reproduction on glossy paper is excellent, although I worry how well the paper will survive conditions at sea. I tested the book in Alaska identifying auklets and murrelets and found it hugely helpful. The artwork in many traditional field guides tends to overemphasize the tufts of feathers and subtle head markings used to distinguish the species. Because this book relies on photos taken at sea in typical oceanic weather, it gives a much more realistic impression of what to expect. It allowed me to identify with conviction some of the birds we saw—and to accept that we did not have a good enough view of others from deck eight of a cruise ship to identify them with certainty. The choice in field guides between artwork and photographs is one that divides opinion. Inevitably, a photograph can only show individual birds, whereas an artist can enhance reality to convey an impression of an entire species, slightly emphasizing key features to make identification easier. The aforementioned Wandering Albatross complex is a good example of this challenge. For Harrison (1983), there was just one species (Diomedia exulans), but now four or five species are recognized within the complex (del Hoyo & Collar, 2014, p. 374), depending on whether the Wanderers that breed around New Zealand are regarded as one or two species (Oceanic Birds goes for two). Each of these species is genetically distinct and breeds on different islands or island groups. The trouble is there is no unequivocal way to distinguish these species by appearance. Harrison thought that young Wanderers were brown and progressively developed more white across their bodies and forewings as they aged (Onley & Scofield 2007, p. 122). This may still apply to some extent to the ageing of the five species, but various plumage types can be identified and only some of the species display each type—so, for example, the Antipodes Albatross (D. antipodensis) never seems to show white on its upper wings and never loses brownish speckling on its back, whereas a Wanderer with an all-white back and a large expanse of white on its wings is only likely to be a Snowy, Gough, or perhaps Gibson's Albatross (D. exulans, D. dabbenena, and D. gibsoni respectively). Oceanic Birds dedicates 11 pages to the identification of the Wandering Albatross complex, but I confess I found the single artwork plate in Onley and Scofield more helpful in attempting to identify the albatrosses that followed our cruise ship off the coast of Chile. However, the photographic plate in Oceanic Birds highlighting differences between Wandering and Royal Albatrosses (D. epomophora complex) was hugely useful. So, will I find space for the 800 g of Oceanic Birds in my suitcase for future cruises? If there is a good local bird guide, as in Alaska for example, then I think I will take that, plus Onley and Scofield (2007) to identify the most difficult oceanic species. But in many other parts of the world, and especially on transoceanic cruises, Oceanic Birds is going to be an essential companion—and it will always be my first point of reference to check difficult photographs when I get home. Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) are not oceanic birds, although I am amazed how widely we see them when cruising—in Alaska and in the backwaters of the Amazon, in Oman, and around the coasts of Australia, as well as back home in Scotland. I have several other books on Ospreys on my bookshelves, including an earlier one by Poole (1989), so do we need a new one? Poole raises that question himself and answers that “the Osprey story has evolved so quickly over the past three decades that in many ways we are looking at a bird we hardly knew in 1985.” He enthusiastically describes how the same techniques of satellite tracking discussed for seabirds in Far From Land have allowed us to understand and track the migrations that Ospreys make from nesting grounds in Europe and North America to wintering grounds in tropical and subtropical habitats and how they live when they get there. He maps and discusses some of the amazing journeys recorded by individual ospreys in North America, Europe, and Africa. Thanks to the successful conservation action that the book describes so well, Ospreys have become a far commoner sight in areas where they had become desperately rare by the middle of last century, and they are still being returned to other areas where they have been absent for generations. In all these habitats, they have adapted to live alongside humans, to the extent that Poole reports that 80% of U.S. Ospreys now nest on some form of artificial structure. He includes box texts that pay tribute to some of the enthusiasts who championed Osprey conservation, including Roy Dennis in Scotland who first stoked my enthusiasm for this magnificent bird, and he summarizes the worldwide conservation effort that by 2015 had increased Osprey numbers to between 46,000 and 58,000 breeding pairs, more than half in the United States. Most people with any interest in natural history (and quite a few who claim no interest) know the story of the Osprey, and all of them would enjoy reading—and learn much—from this lavishly illustrated book. Poole sometimes tries a little too hard to persuade his readers that the Osprey is a magnificent bird (I suspect most will already be Osprey fans), so the text is a touch overwritten in places, but Poole's enthusiasm shines through, and the geographic breadth of the information he brings together is impressive. The last chapter looks at problems ahead, including conflicts with fisheries and fish farms and the continuing impact of contaminants in the water. He champions further recovery programs in areas where Ospreys have been exterminated or remain rare, whereas I would caution against impatience, leaving Ospreys to return at their own pace to areas where they already make occasional appearances. Poole ends by suggesting that the Osprey story “of our capacity to learn from mistakes and regroup for a more sustainable world” offers a door back to encourage ecological literacy. His book makes that case very eloquently. I hope it will inspire and inform similar work for many more species around the world.

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