A rich celebration of the seabirds of the British Isles. Seabirds are the living links between land, air, and sea. They enjoy a freedom that even humans, despite our technological advances, can hardly imagine. Many species travel incredible distances across our planet before returning to land to breed in large, noisy, and crowded colonies.

However, within this chaos, each pair that has mated forms a bond of extraordinary closeness and tenderness that survives throughout the winter and can last for decades. The long and geologically diverse coastline of the British Isles provides shelter to internationally important numbers of breeding seabirds. Visiting their colonies is always an unforgettable experience, whether it’s cliffs teeming with Guillemots, islands covered with integrated Gannets nesting, or beaches filled with frothing Arctic Terns or seaside buildings topped with a second city of gull nests.

The changing fortunes of these seabird colonies reveal the health of the vast, invisible but incredibly rich marine world around us. The book RSPB Seabirds showcases some of the most fascinating and mysterious bird species as vital and living elements of one of our greatest natural treasures: our coastline. The author provides detailed biographies of all seabird species that breed around the British Isles and also examines many others that breed elsewhere but regularly or occasionally visit British waters.

Each page of this rich book features beautiful photographs of wild seabirds engaged in their daily activities—hunting, traveling, self-protection and defending their territories, mating, and raising a family.