James Fisher - Sea-Birds

Collins New Naturalist Library

28

James Fisher and R. M. Lockler

JAMES FISHER M.A.

JOHN GILMOUR M.A.

JULIAN HUXLEY M.A. D.SC. F.R.S.

L. DUDLEY STAMP C.B.E. D.LIT. D.SC.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EDITOR:

ERIC HOSKING F.R.P.S.

The aim of this series is to interest the general reader in the wild life of Britain by recapturing the inquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The Editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native fauna and flora, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research. The plants and animals are described in relation to their homes and habitats and are portrayed in the full beauty of their natural colours, by the latest method of colour photography and reproduction.

To

JULIAN HUXLEY

in gratitude for his guidance

and encouragement,and in recollection of the

many happy days we have spent together,

watching sea-birds

Cover Page

Title Page Collins New Naturalist Library 28

Editors Editors: Editors Editors’ Preface Authors’ Preface CHAPTER 1 THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN: ITS STRUCTURE AND ITS SEA-BIRDS CHAPTER 2 EVOLUTION AND THE NORTH ATLANTIC SEA-BIRDS CHAPTER 3 SEA-BIRD NUMBERS AND MAN CHAPTER 4 WHAT CONTROLS THE NUMBERS OF SEA-BIRDS? CHAPTER 5 SEA-BIRD MOVEMENTS CHAPTER 6 NAVIGATION BY SEA-BIRDS CHAPTER 7 SOCIAL AND SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR CHAPTER 8 THE TUBENOSES CHAPTER 9 THE PELICANS CHAPTER 10 THE SKUAS CHAPTER 11 THE GULLS CHAPTER 12 TERNS AND SKIMMERS CHAPTER 13 THE AUKS APPENDIX LIST OF SEA-BIRDS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION Bibliography Index Plates in Black and White Colour Plates Copyright About the Publisher JAMES FISHER M.A. JOHN GILMOUR M.A. JULIAN HUXLEY M.A. D.SC. F.R.S. L. DUDLEY STAMP C.B.E. D.LIT. D.SC. PHOTOGRAPHIC EDITOR: ERIC HOSKING F.R.P.S. The aim of this series is to interest the general reader in the wild life of Britain by recapturing the inquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The Editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native fauna and flora, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research. The plants and animals are described in relation to their homes and habitats and are portrayed in the full beauty of their natural colours, by the latest method of colour photography and reproduction.

Editors’ Preface

Authors’ Preface

CHAPTER 1THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN: ITS STRUCTURE AND ITS SEA-BIRDS

CHAPTER 2EVOLUTION AND THE NORTH ATLANTIC SEA-BIRDS

CHAPTER 3SEA-BIRD NUMBERS AND MAN

CHAPTER 4WHAT CONTROLS THE NUMBERS OF SEA-BIRDS?

CHAPTER 5SEA-BIRD MOVEMENTS

CHAPTER 6NAVIGATION BY SEA-BIRDS

CHAPTER 7SOCIAL AND SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

CHAPTER 8THE TUBENOSES

CHAPTER 9THE PELICANS

CHAPTER 10THE SKUAS

CHAPTER 11THE GULLS

CHAPTER 12TERNS AND SKIMMERS

CHAPTER 13THE AUKS

APPENDIXLIST OF SEA-BIRDS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION

Bibliography

Index

Plates in Black and White

Colour Plates

Copyright

About the Publisher

IT IS NATURAL that in a series dealing with the wild life of the British Isles sea-birds would be a subject planned for early publication; and in fact this book was announced as forthcoming five years ago. That it has not been completed earlier is not due to any want of industry on the part of its authors. On the contrary, in their researches for this book they have found their subject so absorbing that they have made the interval an opportunity to continue to publish numerous scientific papers, and two monographs, on sea-birds. James Fisher is the author of The Fulmar (1952); and R. M. Lockley, author of Shearwaters (1942), has just published Puffins (1953). There could, in fact, hardly be any other pair of authors better qualified to describe the sea-birds of the North Atlantic than these with their experience of many years of field work and visits along the coast and islands, from Spitsbergen and Iceland in the cool north, to Madeira and the Salvages in the warm south, of that great demi-ocean. They have made their visits often together, and lived much on the small remote islands where sea-birds breed.

The North Atlantic, busiest ocean in the world, is revealed in the opening chapters not as a monotonous watery plain, but as an intricately varied, densely inhabited foraging ground for sea-birds. This avian community, though remarkably homogeneous in different sections of the broad expanse of the North Atlantic, is fascinating in the variety of the species that compose it, and in the complexity of their movements and migrations. The annual migrations of some species extend the total range of the community from the arctic to the antarctic. These long transatlantic migrations, verified by ringing, take species from east to west between Europe and North America, and from north to south between Greenland and South Africa, Britain and South America.

The authors tell us of the primitive progenitors of the sea-birds, dating from over sixty million years ago, and the evolutionary adventures of their descendants, including the notorious extinction of the strange flightless great auk, the sad decline of many other fine species, also the rediscovery of the cahow after it had been presumed extinct. They have paid special attention to geographical distribution, and have provided a unique collection of maps, giving us, for the first time, the distribution of most species of North Atlantic sea-birds.

Chief among the authors’ interests has been the study of sea-bird numbers. They were largely responsible for organising the surveys of that splendid and typical North Atlantic animal, the gannet, which provided biology with the first reasonably accurate figure for the world population of any single and fairly numerous bird species. They have, from their own notes and those of many amateur and professional bird-watchers, produced interesting statistics of the total population of the fulmar, the Manx shearwater, the puffin and many others. Incidentally, such careful counts, site by site, reveal the continuous change that is going on in sea-bird populations, often directly or indirectly due to man’s influence.

The chapters on life-history are preceded by a general account of social and sexual behaviour, which throws light upon the significance of the prolonged and, to the observer, entertaining, mutual ceremonies of these strictly monogamous birds, their pair-formation, their fidelity to their mates, their nest-sites and their parental duties; at the same time problems of instinct and learning ability are discussed. The life-histories include much original field-work by the authors, who have been responsible for several discoveries concerning the incubation and fledging of a number of sea-birds.