Short-billed Gull

How to identify

Field marks

1. Breeding adult has a white head and unmarked yellow bill and legs
2. Adult has white patches on the two outermost primaries
3. Winter adult has a mottled brown head and a gray eye-ring

Male, female and young

Juvenile is brown overall with dark brown wingtips; takes three years to acquire breeding plumage.

Similar species

Common Gull

Common Gull has a larger bill, shorter wings, more black on the wingtips and smaller white patches on the wingtips.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: January and November · Most records: United States, Canada, Mexico

Short-billed Gull has been recorded at 188 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 5 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. North Vancouver – Maplewood Flats Conservation AreaCanada7,481 records
2. Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually NWRUnited States7,260 records
3. Pt. Pinos – seawatch onlyUnited States6,794 records

Countries and regions with the most records

United StatesCanadaMexicoChinaJapan

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The short-billed gull (Larus brachyrhynchus) is a species of gull that breeds in northwestern North America. In North America, it was previously known as the mew gull, when it was considered conspecific with the palearctic common gull (Larus canus). Most authorities, including the American Ornithological Society in 2021, have split the two populations as distinct species.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions