Product Description

The gulls are a large family of seabirds, familiar and distinctive as a group, but one of the most challenging to separate at the species level, especially in their various stages of immature plumage. This guide offers the most comprehensive treatment ever published on the gulls of Europe, Asia, and North America. Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson treat a total of forty-three species--each depicted in considerable detail, with a full description of every plumage and racial variation. The text is complemented not only by superb color paintings by Larsson, but also by 800 color photographs.

Gulls explore a variety of habitats, consume a wide range of food, and are often extremely abundant. They are also great wanderers, with several American species often appearing in Western Europe and vice versa. As well as identification criteria, this book includes an up-to-date assessment of the range and status of every species, together with information on patterns on vagrancy.

This important guide is published at a critical time in the development of gull taxonomy. The large white-headed gulls found in Europe, Asia, and North America comprise a superspecies complex, with the precise relationships between various components still under considerable debate. A thorough illustrative and textual treatment of the group is needed, and this book provides the most recent and complete overview. This is the essential reference to a fascinating and endlessly challenging group of birds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2675963 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Review
"... includes extensive text, plus photographs, drawings, paintings, measurement tables and range maps that give you better odds". -- Jim Williams, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"It is hard to imagine there could be a better book. Quite simply, it is superb". -- Bird Watcher's Digest

Review
Armed with this book, you should be able to separate with confidence an American herring gull from a herring gull. (David Tomlinson New Scientist )

It is hard to imagine there could be a better book. Quite simply, it is superb. (Bird Watcher's Digest )

Will become the reference for gull identification in the Northern Hemisphere for many years. (Choice )

This landmark new book . . . will undoubtedly be welcomed by larophiles across the Northern Hemisphere. (Steve N. G. Howell Birding )

A tough job well done. . . . [I]t is not only a welcome addition but a near necessity in an ornithological library. (J.R. Jehl Jr. The Auk )

Review
This book represents a significant contribution to the field of gull identification, and merits a spot on the bookshelf of every gull enthusiast. It greatly expands the coverage of earlier classics such as the works of Dwight and Grant, both in terms of geographic scope, and in attention to subspecific variation and the complexities posed by hybridization. The author is to be congratulated for providing a level of quantification not seen in earlier works, as well as for providing an impressive level of detail on distribution and population trends. Hans Larsson's plates demonstrate an impressive ability to capture subtleties of shape and intricacies of plumage that are vital in the identification of such a complex group of birds. The combination of photos with well-executed paintings is a most effective approach to illustrating this group of birds. (Kevin J. Zimmer )

Customer Reviews

Finally a rather massive, but useful and beautiful book on our gulls
The size and massive detail in this new book on identifying the gulls of the Northern Hemisphere is likely to deter most readers from more than a cursory leafing through its lovely paintings and photographs. But if you're curious to learn more about these common but highly varied, many-shades-of-gray birds around us, and you happen to live in a coastal area as I do, with more than a few gulls that are hard to identify during the winter, this might be a book to look into more thoroughly.

A caution though: gulls can be notoriously difficult to identify accurately, since they have so much finely detailed, age-related plumage variation. But an effort to simply knuckle-down and learn more about all this, such as this book amply provides, can pay off greatly in much greater detective-fun trying to figure out all these heretofore anonymously gray gulls sailing and prowling around us here each year. It's already helped me develop better skills in figuring out nearly all the varied groups of gulls around us here more quickly than I would have heretofore thought possible. And to more quickly decide which birds you can or cannot more accurately identify...and why.

The detailed accounts and maps of the distribution and relative abundance of various gull species have also helped me better understand where the gulls that migrate through or winter in our area are likely to have come from. And, finally, as you delve more deeply into what's known about all these gull species, and their European and Asian counterparts, it becomes obvious that the series of beautiful, comparative paintings and color photographs provided in such detail for each species in its various age-plumages, subspecies, and hybrid-forms is worth the price of the book alone.

Gulls made easy...
Well....maybe not easy....but, not through any fault of this book! The book starts with a lesson on the various body parts, as you will need to know many of these in order to ascertain what gull you have sitting in front of you. A comparison of the wings comes next. Then, it goes through each gull species and all of its plumages, including the months you might expect to see them in that plumage. It ends by discussing the various hybrids. If you ever hope to get beyond referring to gulls as "gull sp.," this book will do it. When you hear other birders refer to "the gull bible," this is it!!! However, don't think that this is a field guide you might want to carry in a fanny pack...it's a heavyweight!

a must for every birdwatcher and mostly seawatcher
growing up with the knowledge that there are just a few "kinds" of gulls and realising after a while that all the gulls you knew are now called somthing compleatly different (the whole herring,yellow legged,caspian,armenian,lesser black backed,sibirian etc. complex). this is the book we were all looking for, easy to use and extremly proffesional.
another good birding book to have around.