STILLWATER OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE / 12
Harrison updates his classic tome
“ Seabirds ”
Seabirds and waders are some of the hardest birds to prepare for , as they are from the open ocean we don ’ t know .
Peter Harrison just wrote a new version of his book that replaces the old one , “ Seabirds ”.
The author is impassioned about seabirds , been to Antarctica hundreds of times , and has a goal to see an albatross . He wants to come face-to-face with the most itinerant life forms .
Seabirds and waders are some of the hardest birds to prepare for , as they are from the open ocean we don ’ t know . There were no references for appearance , location , and biology until he published the first version of “ Seabirds .” It takes a hardcore person to study seabirds with rolling and pitching water , birds disappearing and reappearing behind waves , then facing the wrong direction , seasickness , etc .
Harrison ’ s original 1983 identification guide opened the door . Alexander wrote “ Birds of the Ocean ,” a tiny black-and-white book in 1928 . Peter is a bird artist , very capable of doing an outstanding book now .
His former career was designing embassies , but the first book was his passion , and he no longer wanted to be an architect . He devoted his life to seabirds , selling his worldly goods to drive around the world seven years , visiting all continents , and could no longer look at skins . He preferred to use his own images .
He needed to work and began by writing seabird mortality data . He became a deckhand and pulled crayfish off the coast of New Zealand , more than in the past three seasons , and was paid piecemeal , gaining fishermen ’ s respect in 1983 .
In Capetown , he recorded Royal Albatrosses with purple eyelids . It took two years to find one at Amsterdam Island , publishing his first scientific paper . Albatrosses have complicated plumages , and have been split , with Peter aware of this in his first book . Then there were thirteen species of albatrosses , so he wrote
A Baker ’ s Dozen devoted to the species , soon adding the Amsterdam Albatross . He finally found at least 18 species , and presently , we have 22 accepted species . There will be another split with two more shortly even with the new book , a cryptic species .
Peter ’ s definition of seabirds has never changed , be they coastal , pelagic , or breeding . There are approximately 434 seabird species , which will soon be changing . This new material is a profound resource not only for tubenoses , but gulls and terns , fringe orders .
Both broad-based books allow us to identify tubenoses from any ocean , vagrants or coastal birds at any estuary ’ s or marine water ’ s edge over the water . The latest book will be useful anywhere around water , not just pelagic regions .
Taxonomy always changes , like Wall Street , even though the question will change on the number of existing species , species boundaries , molt sequences around North Carolina ( one of the largest vagrancy areas ), and cryptic species that still need discovery . The new book has 600 pages , 239 plates , and nearly 4,000 color illustrations , a third larger than the original . Acoustic analysis is recent , like molecular phylogenies , and that will beget another book .
Seabirds are the most threatened order on the planet .
SwOk
A healthy ocean is paramount to their survival .
STORY BY : Deb Hirt Stillwater Oklahoma Magazine
PHOTO : Provided
STILLWATER OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE / 12