Franklin's Gull

How to find it

Look to the Pacific side and to open water. Seawatching from the Puntarenas point near the lighthouse can turn up gulls and terns, and a birder there once saw two migrating Franklin's Gulls fly past. Currents from the inner and outer Gulf of Nicoya meet at this spot. On the coastal road toward Cabuya on the Nicoya Peninsula, stop often to scan the ocean, because resting flocks can sit in a raft just offshore. Check river mouths along the Pacific coast too. Scan any gull flock slowly for the white eye arcs and the rounded, short-tailed shape.

How to recognise it

Franklin's Gull is a small gull, about 32 to 36 cm long. These marks are worth learning in order.

In summer the adult has a black hood, a dark gray back and wings, and black wingtips with a white band next to them. Breeding adults also show a bright red bill and legs.

A bold, partly white eye-ring is one of the key marks.

The shape is rather pigeon-like, with a rounded head and body and a short tail.

The flight is light and buoyant.

Outside the breeding season the black hood shrinks to a dark half-hood on the back of the head, and white crescents above and below the eye nearly meet behind it. Unlike most gulls, it molts fully twice a year, so the bird gets fresh plumage for each long trip.

What it sounds like

Recording: Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

Franklin's Gull eats mostly insects and earthworms. It also takes small fish, especially in winter.

It travels in flocks. Southbound birds leave the breeding colonies in early August, cross the southern Great Plains to the Pacific coast of Central America, and in late August fly on to Peru and Chile. Off the Nicoya Peninsula a large group sat together on the water as one raft, then the whole flock lifted into the air and carried on migrating north.

Where it lives

On its breeding grounds Franklin's Gull nests inland on freshwater prairie marshes in Canada and the northern USA. In winter it is more coastal and is often seen at river mouths along the Pacific coast.

In Costa Rica, the places we have for it are on the Pacific side: the Puntarenas point at the Gulf of Nicoya, and the ocean just off the Nicoya Peninsula coast.

When to see it

A seawatch at the Puntarenas point in mid-April 2022 recorded two flying past on migration, which fits a spring passage. Further north, on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico, northbound birds were found from late March to early May, peaking in late April.

Similar birds

Laughing Gull is the other black-hooded gull on Costa Rica's Pacific coast, and the species most likely to be confused with it. Franklin's is slightly smaller, with a shorter, thinner bill with less hook at the tip. Its white eye arcs and white wingtip spots are more obvious, and on the closed wing the spots form a checkered pattern. Compared with Bonaparte's Gull, Franklin's is larger and has a red bill in breeding plumage, where Bonaparte's is black.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Spanish sources also call it gaviota pipizcan, gaviota pipixcan or gaviota chica. The species name pipixcan is a Nahuatl word that Mexican Indigenous people used for a kind of gull.

Status and conservation

The official Costa Rica list marks it M, a migrant, and across its range the population is increasing and it is rated Least Concern.