The Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea) is one of the most sought-after rarities on Swedish bird lists — a small, entirely white Arctic gull adapted to life on the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean that rarely ventures as far south as Sweden. It is 40–43 cm long with a wingspan of about 108–120 cm, roughly the size of a Black-headed Gull but with a more compact body and shorter neck. The adult is completely snow-white with no dark markings at all, unusual among gulls, with blackish legs and a grey-green bill tipped yellow, often with a reddish tone at the base; the rounded head and compact build separate it from other white gulls. Juveniles are white with a dark face and black spots scattered across the body, most obvious on the wingtips.
The Ivory Gull is mostly silent away from its breeding colonies, where it gives whining, plaintive cries similar to other gulls; the rare individuals reaching Sweden are seldom heard calling. It breeds colonially on steep Arctic cliffs and at glacier edges on Svalbard, Greenland, Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya, following the pack-ice edge in winter and rarely straying south of the Barents Sea — in Sweden it appears only a few times per decade, usually at the ice edge in the Bothnian Bay during cold winters or along the Skagerrak and Kattegat coasts. An opportunistic feeder, it eats fish, carrion, seal droppings and the remains of polar bear kills, staying close to predators and other activity on the ice — a lifestyle that makes it entirely dependent on functioning sea ice, and one reason the species is now classified as globally vulnerable amid shrinking Arctic ice.
Read about this species in Swedish →