Iceland Gull

About the Iceland Gull

The Iceland Gull is a ghost-pale gull of the high Arctic that drifts south in winter, prized by gull watchers for its soft gray tones and wingtips that range from pure white to lightly marked. Despite the name it breeds mostly in Greenland and Arctic Canada, not Iceland.

In Texas it is a genuine rarity, turning up in ones and twos among the thousands of wintering gulls on the coast and at landfills, where picking one pale bird out of a swirling crowd is a connoisseur's game.

This bird was photographed at Bolivar Flats on the upper Texas coast in March 2025, standing out pale among the gull crowd on the same legendary day as the Anahuac Amur Stonechat.