The Complete guide to Antarctic wildlife: birds and marine mammals of the Antarctic continent and the Southern Ocean

Abstract

Having extensive field experience in Earth's southernmost reaches, Israeli ornithologist and writer [Shirihai] has produced a second edition of this authoritative guide, appropriately subtitled Birds and Mammals of the Antarctic Continent and Southern Ocean, six years after the first. Almost identical in format, text, and illustrations, the new edition is 35 pages longer. Additional fine photographs of living mammals and birds in their natural habitats join those that highlighted the earlier book.

45-6171 QL695 MARC Shirihai, Hadoram. The Complete guide to Antarctic wildlife: birds and marine mammals of the Antarctic continent and the Southern Ocean. 2nd ed. Princeton, 2008. 544p index ISBN 9780691136660, $55.00

Having extensive field experience in Earth's southernmost reaches, Israeli ornithologist and writer Shirihai has produced a second edition of this authoritative guide, appropriately subtitled Birds and Mammals of the Antarctic Continent and Southern Ocean, six years after the first. Almost identical in format, text, and illustrations, the new edition is 35 pages longer. Additional fine photographs of living mammals and birds in their natural habitats join those that highlighted the earlier book. Most are of species lacking images before, and all prints are now sharper. These will appeal to all readers, although the additional text will interest ornithologists more. The work mainly supplements information on the most diverse Antarctic vertebrate group, the 82 species comprising the order Procellariiformes. These are the albatrosses, petrels, and shearwaters, birds that spend almost all their lives at sea and seek land only for reproduction, and they are the author's research subjects. The accounts of the birds and the fewer mammals emphasize lifestyles and identification, the latter aided by paintings emphasizing distinctions among similar species. The final section, on the natural history of subantarctic regions and islands to 40 degrees north, is identical in both editions. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers/libraries.-A. J. Kohn, emeritus, University of Washington