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