AUTHORS' PREFACE 



The heroes of our story are rather over a hundred species of birds 

 whose life is a sea-Ufe, whose habits enable them to earn at least 

 part of their living in, or on, salt water, and which have been seen in 

 the Atlantic Ocean north of the Equator. 



The North Atlantic is the scene of our book, the great ocean that 

 is now the most travelled by man. Its two sides are provided with an 

 almost equal variety of sea-birds: sixty-eight species, or rather over 

 half are common to both. Of all Atlantic countries Britain, considering 

 its size, has the greatest number of sea-bird species; with no less than 

 eighty, it can boast on its list all but six of those that have been seen 

 on the Atlantic coast of Europe. The British Isles therefore make a 

 good headquarters for a survey of the sea-birds of the North Atlantic. 

 In Britain, and from Britain, the writers of this book have explored 

 the eastern Atlantic sea-bird stations, and enjoyed many fine islands 

 and memorable experiences. One or the other of us has sought the 

 sea-birds south to the frigate-petrel burrows of the Salvages, near the 

 Canary Islands; north to the ivory-gull colonies on the nunataks 

 that rise from the ice-cap of Spitsbergen; or from 30°N. nearly to 

 8o°N., a distance of more than three thousand miles; west w^e have 

 ranged to Iceland, the Faeroes, Rockall, St. Kilda and the Blaskets 

 of the Kerry coast; east we have travelled to Heligoland, and as far 

 as Laeso in the Kattegat and Gotland in the Baltic, with their off- 

 lying islands of sea-birds. There is no coastal county in England, 

 Wales and Scotland that has not been visited by us both, and not 

 one in Ireland that has not been visited by one of us. 



No good British sea-bird cliff or island has been overlooked in 

 our search for what the naturalist searches for; our experience and 

 enjoyment has been long and continuous because both of us are, 

 each in his somewhat different way, obsessed with sea-birds and with 

 islands. We have spent a combined total of nearly seventy years sea- 

 bird watching. 



We have seen the little crags and green island swards of the Isles 

 of Scilly and the drowned coast of Cornwall; the granite cliffs and 



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