Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea)
Grover Beach, San Louis Obispo County, California
7 November 2010
Joseph Morlan

Photos © 7 November 2010 by Joseph Morlan. All rights reserved. Click for larger images

Dan Singer and I arrived at 10:05 am to find a large group of birders photographing and observing this adult Ivory Gull which had been found on Thursday by Mike Stensvold. I was able to study it in my scope for about one minute after which the bird flew away to the north and was not seen again that day. I attempted to digiscope the bird with the result seen here. The camera was a Panasonic DMC-LZ5 hand-held to a Nikon FieldScope 3 with 30X WA eyepiece.

Description

The following description is based on memory and on the photos.

It was a small all white pigeon-shaped gull with short black legs and webbed feet. The bill was short and dainty with a yellow tip and an olive base mixed with blue and green. The eye was pure black contrasting with the snow white coloration of the rest of the bird. The bird was standing near a seal carcass which had very little meat left. It shared the carcass with an immature Western Gull.

Discussion

This is California's second record of this enigmatic species. The first was an immature photographed 5 January 1996 at Doheny Steate Beach in Orange County (Weintraub & San Miguel 1999). Cin-Ty Lee has an online account with more color photos of the 1996 bird.

This species has a circumpolar distribution, breeding above the Arctic Circle and appears to be declining (Krajick 2003). It normally winters in Arctic waters. On the West Coast it has been recorded as a vagrant in British Columbia and Washington. In Eastern North America, it has been recorded as a vagrant south to Georgia, where an adult was found 25 January 2010 at West Point Dam. It was picked up injured 29 January and subsequently died of its injuries. The Georgia record may be the southernmost in the world, barely beating out the Orange County record by less than a degree of latitude. A full anallysis of past records has been posted on eBird. Bill Maynard discusses the species' population trends and habits on ABA's Peeps.

Additional Photos (external links)

References

Weintraub, J.D. and San Miguel, M. 1999. First record of the Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea) in California. Western Birds 30:39-43. [PDF]
Krajick, K. 2003. In search of the Ivory Gull. Science 301:1840-1841. [PDF]