is treated by the OSNZ as Nominate of SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC SWAMPHEN NZPorphyrio melanotus). In the following example there are four subspecies found in New Zealand:
14.8 LITTLE SHEARWATER19 Puffinus assimilis
Nom. NZNorfolk Island Little Shearwater
ssp kermadecensis NZKermadec Little Shearwater
ssp haurakensis NZNorth Island Little Shearwater
ssp elegans NZSubantarctic Little Shearwater
Of these, elegans can also be seen outside the area covered by this book, but only in NZ it is known as Subantarctic Little Shearwater. (Note: The OSNZ has recently risen the Clements subspecies elegans to independent species NZSUBANTARCTIC LITTLE SHEARWATER Puffinus elegans.)
The French names are those of the Commission Internationale des noms français d’oiseaux (CINFO 1993).
The sequence of families in this book is more or less traditional, but strongly adapted in order to include up to a maximum of nine, rarely ten similar-looking species, sometimes from different families, in one plate.
Format of the Species Accounts
Plates
In general, the plumages depicted on the plates are Br. plumages unless otherwise indicated. Normally, the birds on any given plate are painted to the same scale except flight silhouettes, which are normally shown smaller. If
An effort has been made to show the birds in their typical ‘jizz’; what birders call jizz is a difficult to define combination of size, relative proportions and body carriage of a bird. Part of a bird’s jizz can be, for example, its stance (the angle of its body axis to the horizontal).
Captions
The information for each species is given in this order:
• the English name in bold capitals (with alternative names in standard lower case);
• the French name between square brackets;
• the scientific name in italics;
• length in cm, measured from tip of bill to tip of tail (L) or between the tips of spread wings (W);
• identification notes with emphasis on the main features, or those that are not visible in the plates (e.g. the colour pattern that appears when a bird opens its wings) or those that are most important for separation from similar species. Notes on behaviour are often added when important for identification;
• habitat (the set of environmental factors, preferred by a bird species) preceded by the symbol
• voice, preceded by the symbol
In the voice, attention is paid to:
• pitch, using a subjective scale ‘very low, low, mid-high, high, very high, very/extremely high, extremely high’, wherein ‘very low’ and ‘extremely high’ indicate vocalisations that are just not quite too high or too low to be audible and ‘mid-high’ for the normal pitch of an average person’s voice, if trying to imitate the vocalisation;
• speed, for which terms are used as ‘very slow, slow, calm, rapid, hurried, fast’;
• tempo, as defined by the ‘length’ between notes, indicated by the use or absence of hyphens between notes, so beep beep beep is slower than beep-beep-beep, while beepbeepbeep is the fastest. Also terms such as rattle and trill are used to describe tempo; an apostrophe as in t’sreee is used to indicate a short, yet noticeable separation between two consonants;
• loudness, described as soft, weak, loud, ringing, etc.;
• structure, indicated by terms such as accelerated, lowered, gliding, crescendo, staccato, etc.;
• length of song or call given in seconds;
• quality in terms such as harsh, shrieking, mewing, etc.;
• transcriptions – this is the most difficult way to describe ‘voice’ for several reasons: different people will transcribe bird vocalisations using different vowels and consonants (for example, compare the way in which in several bird guides the chirping of a house sparrow is transcribed) and the differences that exist between written and spoken text in different languages (French people will transcribe a sound in a different way to a Dutch or English speaker).
To keep transcriptions short, use is made of the punctuation mark ‘-’ to indicate repetition of one or more foregoing notes. In ‘preep -’ the note(s) are repeated 1–3 times, in ‘preep - -’ the repetition is more than three times and in ‘preep—’ the repetition is given very fast.
The use of an acute accent on a vowel, for example in weétjer, means that part is accentuated; the diacritic grave, as in rèh-rèh rèh, is used to indicate that the ‘e’ sounds as the ‘e’ in ‘red’; similarly, ò sounds as the ‘o’ in ‘pot’; parts of transcriptions written in capitals are uttered louder.
The vocalisations in this book might support an identification or may make it easier to remember a bird sound when it is heard again. However, it should be kept in mind that though the vocalisations of many seabirds, herons and other large waders are described, they vocalise only or mainly in, above or near their breeding colonies.
The description of voice in this book is based on tapes, CDs and DVDs (see Bibliography).
Distribution Maps
Information about range, seasonality and occurrence can be an important aid in supporting or weakening an identification. In the distribution
