Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A bird, such as a petrel or albatross, that frequents the ocean, especially far from shore.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any bird that spends most of its time in coastal waters or over the oceans.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a bird that frequents coastal waters and the open ocean: gulls; pelicans; gannets; cormorants; albatrosses; petrels; etc.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sea +‎ bird

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Examples

  • This implies that chronic food scarcity will compromise long-term seabird breeding success.

    Carl Safina: Seabirds: The Other Seafood Lovers Carl Safina 2012

  • This implies that chronic food scarcity will compromise long-term seabird breeding success.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Carl Safina 2012

  • A person regarded as stupid. 2 refers to a tropical seabird, which is probably invariably apolitical.

    One more night of convention blogging. The Invesco Field extravaganza. Ann Althouse 2008

  • As Jonathan Balcombe points out in his wonderful book, the animal kingdom at large is a pretty sexy place, what with thick-billed murres (a kind of seabird) having their wicked way with clumps of vegetation, masturbating reptiles, lesbian hedgehogs (I kid you not), gay fruit bats, dolphins with sex toys, and bonobos being pretty much up for anything at all.

    thinkBuddha.org 2009

  • And friendly as a ghost our seabird goes through the pockets hole by hole looking for the meaning of its own ancient hunger.

    Flying Debris Darryl Price 2011

  • The scientists looked at 14 seabird species across 7 ecosystems.

    Carl Safina: Seabirds: The Other Seafood Lovers Carl Safina 2012

  • Guano, a key contributor to 19th-century farming, was renewable fertilizer, made from seabird dung harvested off Peruvian and Namibian islands, but it soon ran out.

    Inconvenient Truths About 'Renewable' Energy Matt Ridley 2011

  • And another thing happens at the threshold; seabird breeding success becomes not just lower but more variable, a wider range of good and bad.

    Carl Safina: Seabirds: The Other Seafood Lovers Carl Safina 2012

  • A tufted puffin from the north Pacific, a medium-sized black seabird with distinctive white facial markings, was recently seen in the UK, though only a handful of spotters were involved and they only got a brief glimpse.

    Rare birds flock to British shores in record numbers 2011

  • I remember being so enthralled by one scene, where the sailors were trying to capture a seabird that had landed on the gunwale, that I almost shouted at my sister, who came into the room just then, Shut up!

    Iain Lawrence Talks About Himself 2009

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