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Accumulation by Birds

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Pollution of the North Sea

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Abstract

The fertile waters of the North Sea form one of the major resorts for sea, shore and water birds of the world, and are also crossed by many migrating landbirds. A rough estimate of their numbers has been made by Evans (1973), who calculated that they may include over 2.5 million breeding seabirds in summer and over 2 million in the winter, with a little over 1.4 million migrant shorebirds or waders in the autumn and a little under 1.3 million in the winter, and a hundred thousand breeding wildfowl in summer, nearly half a million moulting birds in the autumn, and nearly three quarters of a million in the winter. The passing migrants may run into tens of millions. The total which is most easily checked, for breeding seabirds, subsequently proved to exceed four million (Bourne 1983a), and even this may also have been an underestimate. There are probably also a good many more sea duck, especially if one includes another population of a similar size frequenting the approaches to the Baltic (Atkinson-Willes 1975).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Aberdeen University, Tillydrone Avenue, Aberdeen, AB9 2TN, Scotland

    W. R. P. Bourne

  2. Inselstation Helgoland des Instituts für Vogelforschung, Vogelwarte Helgoland, Postfach 12 20, D-2192, Helgoland, Germany

    G. Vauk

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  1. W. R. P. Bourne
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Soil Fertility, Delft Hydraulics Laboratory, P.O. Box 30003, 9750 RA, Haren (Gr), The Netherlands

    Wim Salomons

  2. Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, The Hoe, Plymouth, PL 13 DH, UK

    Brian L. Bayne

  3. Netherland Institute for Sea Research, P.O. Box 59, 1790 AB, Den Burg/Texel, The Netherlands

    Egbert Klaas Duursma

  4. Arbeitsbereich Umweltschutztechnik, Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, Eißendorfer Str. 40, 2100, Hamburg 90, Fed. Rep. of Germany

    Ulrich Förstner

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Bourne, W.R.P., Vauk, G. (1993). Accumulation by Birds. In: Salomons, W., Bayne, B.L., Duursma, E.K., Förstner, U. (eds) Pollution of the North Sea. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73709-1_33

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