coastal Iceland to nw Europe, Labrador to wc North Atlantic coast, and ec North Pacific coast
Identification
A medium-sized but relatively slender, light gull, 50–64 cm long with a wingspan of 115–150 cm and weighing 480–1,100 g. Adults are very pale grey above with white or faintly grey-marked wingtips and no black; round head, rather small bill, pale yellow eye, pink legs. Juveniles are creamy white finely patterned pale brown with pale wingtips too. Smaller and thinner-billed than the glaucous gull and usually smaller than a herring gull. Four years to maturity.
Habitat
Breeds on Arctic sea cliffs; winters on coasts, harbours, fishing ports and estuaries, usually among flocks of large gulls.
Distribution
Breeds in Arctic north-eastern Canada and Greenland, not in Iceland despite the name, where it is only a winter visitor; winters in the North Atlantic south to the British Isles and the north-eastern United States and inland to the Great Lakes. In East Asia only a few winter records from Hokkaido in northern Japan; absent from China and Singapore.
Season and behaviour
Occasional in Hokkaido fishing ports from December to March, usually a single bird among Vega and slaty-backed gulls.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
Among hundreds of large gulls look for the one with no black in the wingtips, scanning the flock with a long lens; the white tips show best when it opens its wings, at 1/1600 s. A pale bird in a snowy harbour clips easily, so half a stop under. Frame it beside a herring gull to show how much smaller and paler it is.
Field ethics: keep a distance at which the bird does not change its behaviour; never approach or publish nest sites; no baiting, playback or flash; never clear vegetation around a nest; follow reserve rules and stay on paths.
Photographic styles
A pale gull in a snowy fishing port; grey-white minimalism.
Similar species
Glaucous gull (larger, heavy bill, flatter head, also white wingtips); Thayer's/Kumlien's forms in North America (grey wingtips); leucistic herring gulls occasionally resemble it.
Related badge
The album badge "a gull" unlocks when the vision model explicitly names a a gull in your photo and you rate the analysis. The badge stops at "a gull": it does not tell species apart, and this page existing unlocks nothing.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. The photograph is from Wikimedia Commons; its licence and author are under it.
