The black-browed albatross is medium-sized, at 31–37 inches long with a 79–94 inch wingspan and an average weight of 6.4–10.4 pounds. It can have a natural lifespan of over 70 years, mate for life and mate every other year. It has a dark grey saddle and upperwings that contrast with the white rump, and underparts. The underwing is predominantly white with broad, irregular, black margins. It has a dark eyebrow and a yellow-orange bill with a darker reddish-orange tip. Juveniles have dark horn-coloured bills with dark tips, and a grey head and collar. They also have dark underwings. The features that distinguish it from other mollymawks (except the closely related Campbell albatross) are the dark eyestripe which gives it its name, a broad black edging to the white underside of its wings, white head and orange bill, tipped darker orange.

Buller's albatross or Buller's mollymawk, Thalassarche bulleri, is a small, snooty-looking mollymawk in the albatross family. It breeds on islands around New Zealand, and feeds in the seas off Australia and the South Pacific.They were named after Walter Lawry Buller KCMG (9th of October 1838 – 19th of July 1906) who was a New Zealand lawyer, naturalist, and dominated in the field of New Zealand ornithology. His book, A History of the Birds of New Zealand, first published in 1873, was published as an enlarged version in 1888 and became a New Zealand classic. 

The Salvin's albatross is about thirty five inches tall and eight feet four inches across the wings. It weighs between seven and ten and a half pounds and is, alongside the shy albatross, the largest of the mollymawk or small albatross group. The adult bird has a silver-grey crown. Its face, upper throat, and upper mantle are grey, and its back, upperwing, and tail are grey-black. It has a white rump and underparts with a black thumbmark on underwing and black narrow leading and trailing edges on the wing and black wing tips. Its bill is pale grey-green with a pale yellow upper ridge, and a bright yellow tip on the upper mandible, and a dark spot on the tip of the lower mandible. The juveniles have more extensive grey areas and a blue-grey bill with black tips on both mandibles. It can be distinguished from the Chatham albatross by its larger size and grey bill, and from the shy albatross by the greyer head.

Named by Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild for the distinguished ornithologist Osbert Salvin, FRS (25th of February 1835 – 1st of June 1898) who was an English naturalist, ornithologist, and herpetologist best known for co-authoring Biologia Centrali-Americana (1879–1915) with Frederick DuCane Godman. This was a fifty two volume encyclopaedia on the natural history of Central America.