Sabine's Gull

How to find it

Think ocean first: birders usually need to look out over open water. From shore you need luck, even around the Gulf of Nicoya, but Puntarenas is a good place to scan the sea with binoculars and a scope. Birds can come in off the ocean at any time. The Gulf of Nicoya ferry on the Puntarenas side has produced sightings and is an easy way to scan open water for uncommon seabirds. Pelagic day trips out of Malpais reach the continental shelf in an hour or less. Boat captains are fishermen who follow the fishing boats, so they know where the fish and birds are.

How to recognise it

Adults have a dark gray hood, a black bill with a yellow tip, and an upperwing split into black, white and gray triangles. It is a small gull, 27 to 33 cm long.

Look for long, narrow, pointed wings and a forked white tail.

In non-breeding plumage the head turns white and the red eye ring fades. The bold wing pattern stays.

Young birds show the same three-part wing pattern, but brown replaces the gray. Their tail has a black band at the tip. They take two years to reach adult plumage.

Behaviour and diet

Its flight is light and buoyant, like a tern's, rising and dropping like driftwood. It dips to the surface for small fish and crustaceans.

Outside the breeding season it spends its time at sea, and it rarely lands except to breed.

Off the Nicoya Peninsula in spring, birds were seen fishing with terns over shoaling anchovies. Away from Costa Rica it also eats insects and offal such as fishing discards, so boats and fishing fleets can attract it.

Where it lives

Across its range it breeds on Arctic tundra and winters in coastal upwelling zones of the tropics and subtropics.

In Costa Rica it is a bird of the Pacific coast and the open water off it, passing through rather than staying. Records come from the Gulf of Nicoya, Puntarenas, Ostional on the Nicoya Peninsula, and offshore trips from Quepos, Jaco, Malpais and Cabuya.

When to see it

Early September is a time they pass through. A pelagic day between Quepos and Jaco on 3 September 2014 counted about 15 birds, and a Puntarenas post from September 2026 reports two flying in off the ocean.

Similar birds

Only one other gull has a black bill with a yellow tip and a notched tail. That is the Swallow-tailed Gull of the Galapagos. Wing pattern and range help separate the two.

Status and conservation

The AOCR list marks it as a migrant (M), and the IUCN lists the species as Least Concern.