Review in British Birds 8/2003 
By Martin Garner

I borrowed Anthony McGeehan’s copy of Sjöfågelboken: fältbestämning av sträckande sjöfåglar a few years ago, and he was lucky to get it back! Written in Swedish, it is an excellent collection of black-and-white photographs of seabirds in flight, and a great resource. Bertil Breife and Niklas Holmström were two of its authors, and now they have teamed up with Anders Blomdahl to produce the successor to that book, this time with colour photographs and written in English. Having coveted the first book, I certainly looked forward to the second.

The book has a soft, laminated cover designed for use in the field, although I would be too scared of getting the pages wet to take it out. It covers the expected divers Gavia, grebes (Podicipedidae), tubenoses and allies (Procellariidae), gannets (Sulidae), cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae), skuas (Stercorariidae), gulls (Laridae), terns (Sternidae) and auks (Alcidae). It differs from those other two seabird photographic guides, Photographic Handbook of the Seabirds of the World (Enticott & Tipling 1997) and Seabirds of the World: A Photographic Guide (Harrison 1987) in that wildfowl (Anatidae) are also covered in detail.

A helpful introduction includes basic aspects of identifying seabirds and a very useful table of seawatching sites across western Europe. Each group of species is preceded by a general overview of the key features of the group, while each species account is subdivided into several sections including size, silhouette, flight and flocking, plumage, and – where relevant – subspecies. The text is accompanied by a variety of flight shots illustrating various aspects of the birds’ appearance.

Seawatching is a unique discipline. Precise plumage details often take second place behind jizz, subjective impressions and briefly seen plumage ‘clues’. The tricky issues involved are well played out in, for example, the account of a possible Herald Petrel Pterodroma arminjoniana off Dungeness, Kent (Brit. Birds. 95: 156-165). So how well does this book communicate these things?

The initial impression is of a fantastic collection of colour photographs, especially of wildfowl in flight. The text is fairly simple and full of information, with quite a few hints and tips which were new to me. The enthusiasm for and knowledge of seabirds which the authors possess is clear throughout. I decided quickly that this would be a useful reference book. My particular favourites are the information on flock shapes and individual silhouettes of the wildfowl, and the photos of the ‘darker’-rumped Leach’s Storm-petrel Oceanodroma leucorhoa and the flock of first-summer Ross’s Gulls Rhodostethia rosea.

Having said all that, I was ultimately a little disappointed. I wonder if many will miss the vital tips because they are buried away in the text. Moreover, photographs alone cannot convey the unique skills which seawatchers typically develop and have to sharpen continually. Take for example Sabine’s Gulls Larus sabini. The quickest way to pick them up is on their (almost) unique flight action, most often confused with Arctic Tern Sterna paradisaea. Rudimentary ageing of Sabine’s Gulls for me is: white collar = adults... no white collar and shorter-looking tails = juveniles. The rest is usually irrelevant unless the birds are very close. I had hoped for something like a series of vivid sketches to illustrate flight action, flight path and the little plumage clues which are just visible at long range, along with pointers and a short, pithy text. I could easily imagine a similar treatment for the skuas and the Pterodroma petrels. It is extremely difficult to convey in photographs alone the ‘seawatch experience’ and appearance of these birds. I wondered why some species – such as Bar-headed Anser indicus and Egyptian Geese A. aegyptiacus – were included. Pacific Diver G. pacifica is covered as a possible vagrant, but who would claim one on a European seawatch? Yet more pertinent vagrants, such as Capped P. hasitata and Herald Petrels, Yellow-nosed Thalassarche chlororhynchos and Wandering Albatrosses Diomedea exulans, are missing, and there is nothing at all on that prized seabird, the Grey Phalarope Phalaropus fulicarius.

This could have been an opportunity to be at the forefront of new identification challenges such as Cory’s Calonectris diomedea versus ‘Scopoli’s’ Shearwater C. d. borealis and the tricky black-and-white shearwaters. So a comment is made on the characteristic ‘head-lifting’ of Little Shearwater Puffinus assimilis, when in fact it is also a normal feature of Levantine Shearwater P. yelkouan (and illustrated in the published photos!) The photographs are mostly helpfully and accurately labelled, though the ‘first-calendar-year’ Larus michahellis from Romania is in fact a first-year L. cachinanns.

So, we do not yet have the definitive European seabird guide. Nevertheless, I do want to emphasise that this is a great collection of photos with a useful text, and is a resource well worth having.