All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Skimmers, noddies, terns and gulls › Glaucous Gull
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Glaucous Gull | Larus hyperboreus
Grote burgemeester | Gaviota hiperbórea
Glaucous Gull is one of the largest gulls and the palest of them: adults have no black in the wing. It breeds around the entire North Pole and winters mainly in cold seas. In the guide area it is a scarce winter visitor, most often in north-western Mexico and on the Gulf coast of Tamaulipas, and rare elsewhere.
Voice
A low, hoarse kyow and laughing series, lower and harsher than those of American Herring Gull; in winter calls little.
Recording: Mats Rellmar — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
64–77 cm. A large, heavy gull with a stout, long bill, a flat head and wings that project only a little beyond the tail. Adults have a very pale grey mantle, pure white wingtips, a yellow bill with a red spot, pink legs and a pale eye; in winter the head and neck are mottled brown. First-winter birds are uniformly pale buff-brown to almost white, finely mottled, with pale primaries and a pink bill with a sharply demarcated black tip.
Confusion species
Iceland Gull Larus glaucoides is smaller, with a round head, a shorter bill and longer wings; the form thayeri, which occurs most in the guide area, has grey-black outer webs in the wingtip. Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens has grey wingtips the same shade as the mantle, and young birds have an almost entirely dark bill. Hybrids between Glaucous Gull and Glaucous-winged Gull or American Herring Gull Larus smithsonianus closely resemble Glaucous Gull but have greyish wingtips or a less sharply demarcated bill tip; such birds are hard to name with certainty.
Habitat
Beaches, lagoons, harbours, river mouths and rubbish dumps, usually among flocks of other large gulls. It eats fish, carrion and refuse, and also hunts smaller birds and takes eggs.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In winter scarce along the coasts of Baja California and Sonora, mainly in the northern Gulf of California, and rare further south along the Pacific coast. On the Gulf coast scarce to rare, mainly in the north; further south in the guide area at most a very rare vagrant. Outside the guide area the species breeds along the coasts of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and northern Russia, and winters along the coasts of the North Pacific and North Atlantic and on the Great Lakes.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Flocks of large gulls on beaches, in harbours and at rubbish dumps in the northern Gulf of California and in Tamaulipas offer the best chance in winter. A large, pale gull without black in the wing stands out in such a flock; the stout bill and short wing projection separate the species from Iceland Gull.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). The world population is large but poorly known because of the remote breeding range. In the guide area a scarce winter visitor with no breeding population, whose numbers vary from year to year.
Scientific name
Larus hyperboreus | Gunnerus, 1767
Gunnerus described the species in 1767 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Larus was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Larus is Latin, from Ancient Greek laros, and appears to have referred to a gull or another large seabird. hyperboreus is Latin for 'northern', after the Ancient Greek Hyperboreoi, the people said to live in the far north. The specimen the first description was based on came from northern Norway.