United States and because most of the waterfowl breed only well north of the 

 area under consideration. 



Our search of the literature also stressed recentness of information and 

 each species bibliography should be relatively complete through mid-1980. Some 

 important references published subsequently are included but these may not have 

 been used in writing the account. The variety of recent papers covered is some- 

 what greater than in Volume I because we attempted to provide a more complete 

 listing of references that have appeared subsequent to recent handbooks. We 

 have listed important papers dealing with the biology of the species going back 

 to the early part of the century, but have been more complete with papers writ- 

 ten in English. We include older references that are still major sources of 

 information on the species. 



The species bibliographies are arranged from present to past with authors 

 listed alphabetically under each year, rather than in the more conventional al- 

 phabetical and chronological arrangement used in the Literature Cited. We did 

 so to make it easier for the reader to find the most recent information on any 

 topic covered by the bibliography. 



We have checked all references used in the text as well as a large propor- 

 tion of the remaining references , but some citations from secondary sources re- 

 main unverified. We estimate that the three volumes in this series will contain 

 on the order of 10,000 references in the terminal species bibliographies, and 

 our temporal and fiscal limitations were too great for us to undertake complete 

 verification of all references included. 



OIL POLLUTION AND MARINE BIRDS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 



With the possible exception of marine turtles, marine birds are the verte- 

 brates most severely threatened by oil pollution and the development of oil re- 

 sources. 



The work of Old World biologists presents clear evidence of severe and sub- 

 stantial damage to several populations of marine birds. Specific, detailed in- 

 formation on the effects of oiling and oil spills on wild birds and their popu- 

 lations in the New World, let alone the southeastern United States, is very li- 

 mited. Whether any given species has ever been oiled and what effect this may 

 have had is unknown in many instances. Systematic gathering of data on the spe- 

 cies composition of large seabird kills following oil spills has been done in- 

 frequently in the New World and systematic surveys of beached birds have only 

 recently begun in the United States. Furthermore, data on oiling of marine 

 birds are scattered through a diverse body of literature. Many distributional 

 notes reporting the first occurrence or first specimen of a species from a geo- 

 graphic locality parenthetically note that the specimen was oiled. Other in- 

 formation is scattered through regional distributional works, and yet more data, 

 which we did not have time to explore fully, lies in the banding and recovery 

 files of the Bird Banding Laboratory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 



In Denmark, oil pollution kills thousands of seabirds each year. Most of 



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