Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America: a photographic guide

Steve Howell’s book adds greatly to the growing literature on seabirds at sea. A surprisingly wide array of species are observable offshore from North America, some of them remarkably little known. We were particularly impressed by his thorough treatment of complex taxa, such as Madeiran Oceanodroma castro and Leach’s Storm-petrels O. leucorhoa, where splits at species level have been recently made or are proposed, and at least one taxon worthy of species level has yet to be scientifically described. Such taxonomic advances are fundamentally important to the conservation of oceanic biodiversity.