Iceland Gull | Larus glaucoides

Voice

Higher and thinner than Glaucous Gull, nearer Herring Gull but reedier and more hurried. Almost always silent in western European harbours; the best chance of a call is a squabble over fish, a shrill cackling series. At the Greenland colony a long laughing call rings out from a rock ledge.

Identification

Adults show a mid-grey mantle, close to Herring Gull, and wholly white primaries. The bill is yellow-green with a red gonydeal spot, the iris pale yellow inside a dark red to purplish orbital ring, the legs pink; in winter the head is heavily streaked. First-winter birds are creamy white to pale buff with a fine, freckled pattern and a largely dark bill. Structure carries the identification: domed head, small bill, slight chest and a strikingly long wing that draws the body out behind.

Confusion species

Glaucous Gull is the standing confusion, and size alone will not get you there: a small female Glaucous and a large male Iceland overlap, so structure does the work. Iceland is slight and round-headed with a soft expression, against the bulky, deep-chested, flat-crowned Glaucous. Bill length and forehead shape are the key pair: here a short, fine bill with barely any gonydeal angle under a steeply rising forehead, the large eye set high in the head; there a long, thick bill with a strong gonydeal angle under a low, sloping forehead, the small eye set well forward. Primary projection beyond the tail is the most reliable measure at range: on Iceland the wingtips reach further than the bill is long, often one and a half to two bill lengths, and a swimming bird looks long and pointed behind; on Glaucous the projection falls short of the bill length. On first-year birds the bill-tip demarcation decides it: a first-year Iceland has a largely dark bill with at most a dirty pale base and a diffuse border, while a first-year Glaucous has a pink bill ending in a knife-sharp, straight-cut black tip. Race matters here too. Adult kumlieni carry grey pigment in the outer primaries, from smoky smudges to a grey subterminal pattern, often with a darker iris, while nominate glaucoides stays wholly unmarked white; young kumlieni average darker and more coarsely marked. The standing of kumlieni is still disputed and European birds are almost always nominate, so be slow to label one. Beyond that, a bleached or albinistic Herring Gull is the classic trap: it keeps dark shafts inside worn, ragged, half-translucent primary tips where a real white-winger has clean, intact white ones, and its structure, bill shape and leg colour stay those of a Herring Gull. Finally, harbours in Iceland and the British Isles hold Herring x Glaucous hybrids with pale but not white wingtips and an intermediate bill; they belong to neither white-winger.

Habitat

In winter a bird of fish quays, harbour walls and lock sills, of landfills and of the tideline where fish waste washes up; it begs behind trawlers and rests on harbour water. It breeds on steep cliffs along the Greenland fjords and in the North American Arctic. Between those two extremes it is at sea, working the wake of the fleet.

Range and movements

Breeds in west and east Greenland and Arctic North America; in winter over Iceland, the British Isles and the North Sea. Iceland is the stronghold, with hundreds in the harbours; Shetland, the Hebrides and the ports of the north and west of the British Isles hold birds every winter. Further south quickly scarcer: a few each year on the North Sea coast, a rarity of the north coast of Iberia from December to March, exceptional in the Mediterranean.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

How and when to look

In February or March go to a fishing harbour in the north-west — on Shetland or the Hebrides, along the northern and western coasts of the British Isles, on the North Sea or in Iceland — and scan the harbour water rather than the beach flock: a swimming Iceland Gull gives itself away by the long, tapered rear end reaching far past the tail, and it is often the tamest bird in the basin. Take your time over the head, because the soft face and the small bill convince where size does not.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened, with a large but thinly populated breeding range that is hard to census. The concerns are the changing ice cover around Greenland, the decline in trawler discards that the north-west European winter numbers ride on, and hunting in parts of the breeding range. For observers on the southern North Sea coast the species is above all an indicator of hard north-westerly winters.

Scientific name

Larus glaucoides | Meyer, 1822

Meyer described the species in 1822 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. glaucoides means 'resembling Larus glaucus', an old name for the glaucous gull; the suffix -oides is Ancient Greek for 'resembling'.