Oct 6, 2023 · By Erik Olsen

The California Gull, Utah’s State Bird, Has a Surprisingly Big Story

The California gull looks like an average gull, but it’s Utah’s state bird, the hero of a pioneer “miracle” and a symbol of the fight to save Mono Lake.

Updated Oct 12, 2026

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The California gull is the Toyota Camry of birds: medium-sized, medium-gray, totally dependable and easy to overlook. You’ve seen thousands of them on beaches and in parking lots. But this unremarkable-looking bird has a surprisingly good story, including a starring role in a pioneer miracle and a bitter fight over water.

Telling gulls apart is one of the harder skills in birding. The differences come down to things like the shape of the bill, the exact shade of gray on the back and the color of the legs. And on just about every one of those, the California gull is right in the middle.

Its bill is medium length. Its back is medium gray. It’s medium-sized for a gull. Even its legs are a middling yellowish-green. It doesn’t migrate across the planet like an Arctic tern, and it doesn’t stay put either. It moves maybe 500 to 1,000 miles between where it breeds and where it winters.

California gull. (Larus californicus) Image: Wikipedia

In winter, you’ll find them wherever gulls hang out: beaches, harbors, landfills, parking lots, fields and tide pools. In spring, many head inland to breed at lakes across the West, then come back to the coast by late summer.

Here’s the twist: the California gull is the state bird of Utah, not California. In 1848, swarms of Mormon crickets (actually a big, flightless katydid) were devouring the first crops planted by Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley, and then flocks of gulls arrived and ate them. The Sea Gull Monument in Salt Lake City tells the story:

“The Mormon pioneers planted crops in the spring of 1848, after suffering great hunger during their first winter in the Salt Lake Valley. As the crops ripened, hordes of devouring crickets descended upon them from the foothills east of the valley. The Saints fought them with clubs, fire, and water. As they despaired of saving the next winter’s food, their prayers for deliverance from almost sure starvation were answered when thousands of sea gulls came to feed on the crickets. The Sea Gull Monument commemorates this modern-day miracle. The sea gull is now the Utah State bird.”

Sea Gull Monument in Salt Lake City (Wikipedia)

California gulls also became a symbol in one of the state’s great environmental fights. Mono Lake, in the Eastern Sierra, is one of their most important breeding sites. (It’s also known for its microbial aliens.) Starting in 1941, Los Angeles diverted the streams that feed the lake into its aqueduct, and the lake started to drop. By the late 1970s, it had fallen so far that a land bridge connected the shore to Negit Island, where thousands of gulls nested, and coyotes walked across and raided the colony. The gulls became a rallying point for the Mono Lake Committee, which fought Los Angeles in court for years. In 1994, the state ordered the city to let the lake rise again, and it’s been slowly coming back since.

Mono Lake Photo: Erik Olsen

Sometimes there can be too many gulls. In the old salt ponds of South San Francisco Bay, California gull nests exploded from just 24 in 1980 to tens of thousands by 2013, fed in part by nearby landfills. And all those gulls have been eating the chicks of other birds, including endangered terns and plovers. It’s a tricky problem: when, if ever, should we step in and control one native species to protect another? Not bad for a bird most people never look at twice.