Bryan Nelson obituary
Seabirds are to many ornithologists the most fascinating of all bird groups. For Bryan Nelson, who has died aged 83, they became a benign obsession, to which he devoted most of his professional and personal life as an author, zoologist and academic.
His passion for such birds found its outlet in several books, which ranged from a detailed and authoritative monograph on the gannet (The Gannet, 1978) to a concise introduction to the same species in the popular Shire Natural History series (1979). He once described himself as the "major biographer" of the gannet, but his masterwork, published in 2006, was a hefty volume entitled Pelicans, Cormorants, and their Relatives, produced by the Oxford University Press as part of its Bird Families of the World series. In addition to his books, Nelson also wrote numerous scientific papers and popular articles, appeared on radio and television, and made natural history films on seabirds.
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