Introduction

Hith Recent Reports we intend to connect several available sets of data in a way certain trends or incidents are easily located at an early stage. Seawatching data, offshore ship-based seabird counts and beached bird surveys become available in a constant stream. We will therefore stimulate all those, participating in the three schemes, to discuss their data soon after obtaining them by presenting the major results briefly (summarized) in Recent Reports. Recent Reports will be a success only if many people do help us by sending relevant data to us. It will be published in english because we feel a summarized report should not be summarized again and because of our fast growing number of foreign subscribers. Recent Reports intends to summarize and review seabird presence in the southern North Sea primarily and we would welcome others to participate, also from other parts of the North Sea. Please contact us and send your data and preliminary results to the editor: Paletstraat 26, 1825 KS Alkmaar, the Netherlands.