What is the Utah state bird?

Why is a gull Utah's state bird?

Because of the summer of 1848. “Swarms of crickets descended on the fields in late May 1848,” in the Salt Lake Valley where the Mormon pioneers had planted their crops, and “in early June large flocks of California gulls swept the valley,” according to Church History Topics, from the history department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“The Miracle of the Gulls is credited with saving the people,” says the Utah State Library, and the gull was Utah's state bird “by common consent” before any law named it.

Did the miracle of the gulls happen as the story says?

In part. The gulls were real, and the settlers were grateful, but the Church's own historians write that “some later accounts exaggerated the story,” for instance by suggesting the gulls had never appeared in the area before. The settlers also worried as much about “the late frosts and lack of irrigation” as about crickets.

The historian William G. Hartley, writing in the Utah Historical Quarterly in 1970, found that the official summary of events in the valley up to 1849 “nowhere mentions the gulls,” LDS Living reports, and the first recorded telling of the gulls as a providence is credited to the apostle Orson Hyde in 1853.

Why does Utah's law say sea gull?

Because of an encyclopedia. House Bill 51 of 1955, “An Act Providing for the Selection and Designation of a State Bird,” was sponsored by Representatives Richard C. Howe and Jaren L. Jones, both of Salt Lake. In 1955, the State Library says, Representative Wendell Grover “referred to an encyclopedia that listed only a 'California seagull'” and suggested adding the word California. The law still says “sea gull.”

There is no such species. “No gull species is actually called a seagull or sea gull,” the library notes; the bird meant is the California Gull, Larus californicus, and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources writes it as “the sea gull (California gull).”

So Utah's state bird is named for another state, and the division points out where the bird really thrives: “The largest complex of breeding California gulls resides not in California,” but at the Great Salt Lake (Great Salt Lake Ecosystem Program).

Where can you see California Gulls in Utah?

Around the Great Salt Lake. In the lake's north arm, California gulls nest alongside pelicans on Gunnison Island, the division says, and they feed on the lake's flies: “Gulls eat the flies right out of the air.” In late summer and fall, large numbers of California and Franklin's gulls gather where fresh water flows into the lake (Great Salt Lake habitats).

They also follow the farmer. The National Audubon Society's guide says California Gulls nest at inland lakes and marshes and often forage for insects “around farms, plowed fields.” In winter most leave: “Most move to western California's Pacific coast in winter,” the State Library says.

They can live a very long time. The oldest California Gull in the federal banding records was banded as a chick in California in May 1985 and caught there, injured, in August 2013, at least 28 years and 3 months old, and was kept in captivity (USGS Bird Banding Laboratory; see the oldest wild birds).

What is the Seagull Monument?

A monument to the gulls of 1848, on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. “Two sculptured gulls stand atop the monument which was unveiled in 1913,” the State Library says, and “Mahonri MacKintosh Young sculpted the monument.”

Who painted the gulls on this page?

E. R. Kalmbach, an assistant biologist at the US Department of Agriculture, who painted the twelve color plates for Floyd Bralliar's Knowing Birds Through Stories (1922). He signed this one “E. R. Kalmbach” with the year '22 beneath, and the book captions it “California Gulls Gathering Insects” (the book on the Internet Archive).

The picture fits Bralliar's chapter. He went to Provo, Utah, to teach in the fall of 1897, and the next April, plowing a rented garden plot, found “two or three hundred of these birds in the field,” “fussing and quarreling over every bug and worm my plow turned up.”

He retold the settlers' tale, though he dated it “one April day in 1850,” two years late, and he doubted the famous detail that the gulls threw up the insects after drinking and went back for more: “None that I have ever watched lost any.”

Does Utah have another official bird?

Yes. The golden eagle has been Utah's state bird of prey since Governor Spencer Cox signed S.B. 116 on March 23, 2022, the Division of Wildlife Resources says, and Utah Code 63G-1-601 now names both birds: “Utah's state bird of prey is the golden eagle.”

Does any other state have the California Gull?

No. Utah is the only state with the California Gull as its state bird, and the only one whose state bird is a gull. California itself chose the California Quail.

Questions about the Utah state bird