Editing Seabird (section)

=== Role in culture ===
[[File:Pelican in its piety.jpg|thumb|right|Depiction of a pelican with chicks on a stained glass window, Saint Mark's Church, [[Gillingham, Kent|Gillingham]], [[Kent]]]]
Many seabirds are little studied and poorly known because they live far out at sea and breed in isolated colonies. Some seabirds, particularly the albatrosses and gulls, are more well known to humans. The albatross has been described as "the most legendary of birds",<ref name ="delhoyo">{{ cite book | last=Carboneras | first=C. | year=1992 | chapter=Family Diomedeidae (Albatrosses) | editor1-last=del Hoyo | editor1-first=J. | editor2-last=Elliott | editor2-first=A. | editor3-last=Sargatal | editor3-first=J. | title=Handbook of the Birds of the World | volume=1: Ostrich to Ducks | place=Barcelona, Spain | publisher=Lynx Edicions | isbn=84-87334-10-5 | pages=198–215 | chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/handbookofbirdso0001unse/page/198/mode/1up | chapter-url-access=registration }}</ref> and have a variety of myths and legends associated with them. While it is widely considered unlucky to harm them, the notion that sailors believed that is a myth<ref name="Brit">{{ cite book | last1=Cocker | first1=Mark | last2=Mabey | first2=Richard | year=2005 | title=Birds Britannica | place=London | publisher=Chatto and Windus | page=10 | isbn=978-0-7011-6907-7 }}</ref> that derives from [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]]'s famous poem, "[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]", in which a sailor is punished for killing an albatross by having to wear its corpse around his neck. Sailors did, however, consider it unlucky to touch a storm petrel, especially one that landed on the ship.<ref>{{ cite book | last=Carboneras | first=C. | year=1992 | chapter=Family Hydrobatidae (Storm-petrels) | editor1-last=del Hoyo | editor1-first=J. | editor2-last=Elliott | editor2-first=A. | editor3-last=Sargatal | editor3-first=J. | title=Handbook of the Birds of the World | volume=1: Ostrich to Ducks | place=Barcelona, Spain | publisher=Lynx Edicions | isbn=84-87334-10-5 | pages=258–271 | chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/handbookofbirdso0001unse/page/258/mode/1up| chapter-url-access=registration }}</ref>

Gulls are one of the most commonly seen seabirds because they frequent human-made habitats (such as cities and [[landfill|dumps]]) and often show a fearless nature. Gulls have been used as metaphors, as in ''[[Jonathan Livingston Seagull]]'' by [[Richard Bach]], or to denote a closeness to the sea; in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', they appear in the insignia of [[Gondor]] and therefore [[Númenor]] (used in the design of the films), and they call [[Legolas]] to (and across) the sea. Pelicans have long been associated with mercy and [[altruism]] because of an early [[Christianity|Christian]] myth that they split open their breast to feed their starving chicks.<ref name ="elliot" />