A rare gull showed up at the Pymatuning spillway last Friday in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. Thanks to Mark Vass’s report and the gull’s three day stopover, many birders saw this beautiful Sabine’s gull.
Named for Edward Sabine(*) who first noted the bird in Greenland in 1818, adults in breeding plumage are easy to identify with dark gray hoods, yellow-tipped black bills, notched tails, and triangles of black-white-gray on their upper wings. As you can see in Shawn Collins’ photos, this one is an adult.
What a cooperative bird!
Sabine’s gulls breed on the tundra at the top of the world in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia. Their breeding and dietary habits are so unusual that they’re alone in their genus: Xema sabini. They call, fly, and court like terns. Their chicks fledge before fully feathered like terns, but are precocial like shorebirds. In the Arctic, adults and juveniles feed on the mudflats like shorebirds yet they live on the open ocean most of their lives.
As soon as breeding is over Sabine’s gulls leave for the southern hemisphere, covering 7,500 to 9,000 miles as they make their way to coastal upwelling currents near South America and Southern Africa. Most migrate offshore, especially the juveniles, but a few cross the continent. In North America the western group winters at the Pacific’s Humboldt Current while those who breed in eastern Canada and Greenland cross the Atlantic to winter at the Benguela Current near the southern coast of Africa.
Though unusual, this bird was not off course. He knows the Humboldt Current is due south of Hudson Bay. He was taking a shortcut.
(photos by Shawn Collins)
* Sabine is pronounced “SAB ine” where SAB rhymes with “cab” and “ine” rhymes with “wine.” For a complete (and light-hearted) list of bird-name pronunciations see Kevin McGowan’s list here.
Not really related, but something I’ve been wondering. You always talk about birds that breed in the Northern hemisphere then spend the the Northern winters in the Southern hemisphere where it’s summer. Are there any birds that do the opposite (breed in the Southern hemisphere and winter in the Northern hemisphere)?
Good question, J.
The main group of birds that “flips” south-north are the tubenoses – open ocean birds who breed in the southern oceans and spend the summer in northern oceans.
Here’s a brief list — not exhaustive! — of birds that breed in the southern hemisphere and spend their winter (our summer) in northern oceans: Wilson’s Storm-petrel (I’ve blogged about this one), Great shearwater, Sooty shearwater, 4 other Petrels (mostly in the Pacific), 4 other shearwaters (all in the Pacific), and the South Polar Skua (not a tubenose, I’ve seen this bird in the Gulf of Maine).
It’s interesting that sea birds flip south-north but land birds do not.
Interesting, thanks for the response.