The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds
book by Dominic Serventy
The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds is a book published in 1971 by A.H. & A.W. Reed in Sydney. It was authored by Dominic Serventy, his brother Vincent Serventy, and John Warham. It is in octavo format (252 x 190 mm) and contains 264 pages bound in black buckram with a dustjacket illustrated with a photograph of a red-tailed tropicbird in flight. It contains numerous coloured and black-and-white photographs of seabirds, most of them taken by John Warham, as well as many sketches, maps and diagrams.
The stated aim of the authors is to enable seabirds found in Australian waters to be correctly identified and to record the known facts of their habits. Seabirds covered include the penguins, albatrosses and other petrels, tropicbirds, frigatebirds, gannets, cormorants, pelicans, skuas, gulls and terns, 104 species in all. With regard to the layout and content of the book the authors say:
”This book consists of two main parts. In the first we attempt a general account of Australia’s sea-bird fauna, its environment in the past and today, its distribution and the categories of birds found there. We also discuss some biological problems affecting those sea-birds, aspects of current research into their habits, and the problem of their conservation. The second part (Section V) of the book summarises what is known to date of the different species of birds in our region.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds” is book by Dominic Serventy. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Handbook, Australian and Sea-birds, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “book by Dominic Serventy” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17006082. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “The Handbook of Australian Sea-birds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.