July, 1904 1 
THE CONDOR 
99 
About the Utah Gull 
BY REV. S. II. GOODWIN 
T he return of the gulls brings to mind a curious situation in relation to the 
specific name of the sacred bird of the Latter Day Saints. If we may judge 
from the variety of names applied to these birds, which come in such num- 
bers — in the spring — into the valleys of central Utah, more or less of uncertainty 
exists as to the species. 
In an article by H. L. Graham, in Popular Science Mo^ithly, Vol. 52, these birds 
are called the American herring gulls (Larus argenfatus smith sonianus), a sub- 
species, by the way, which was eliminated from the Check-List by the Eleventh 
Supplement. Olive Thorne Miller in “A Bird-Lover in the West,” writes inter- 
estingly of some of the habits of the Utah gull, which she calls the “Her- 
ring Gull” {L. a. smif hsonianiisf) 
It is not surprising that those who write bird articles and books of a popular 
character should sometimes be less than exact when applying the accepted nomen- 
clature to “our little brothers of the air’’: the object in view may not seem to re- 
quire accuracy in this respect. The matters which receive the attention of such 
writers are the habits and haunts and individuality and life of the birds. But 
that a recognized authority on the subject should, apparently, slip in this matter 
does afford occasion for surprise. 
In that excellent and most serviceable work, ‘‘A Handbook of Birds of the 
Western United States,” Vernon Bailey has the following in connection with the 
Franklin gull {Larus franklini)-. * * In Utah their services are so well 
appreciated that Brigham Young used to offer up prayers that they he sent to de- 
stroy the grasshoppers that infested the land. One often sees flocks of fifty to 
five hundred catching grasshoppers on the wing, wheeling, diving, and rising, till at 
a distance the white flock suggests a wild flurry of snowflakes.” This reference to 
the local history, and to the habits of the Utah gulls, is correct, but the name is 
not. The writer, of course, does not know what gulls earned the lasting gratitude 
of the Mormon people in the pioneer days of ’48 — the story of which was told by 
President Smith in the “Deseret Evening News” of February 14, 1903 — but, if 
they were the Franklin, then that species has been replaced by another, for the 
gulls which now find their way into these valleys by the thousands, are the Cali- 
fornia gulls {Larus californicns). 
I have seen thousands upon thousands of these gulls during my six years’ 
residence in the state; I have photographed them repeatedly; I have watched them 
for hours as they circled about the newly plowed field, or followed close behind 
the plowman, as blackbirds do in some localities, or sunned themselves on the 
ridges of the furrows after a hearty meal of worms; I have studied them as they 
fared up and down the river in search of dead fish and other garbage, or assembled 
in countless numbers in some retired, quiet slough where they rent the air with 
their harsh, discordant cries and demoniac laughter, or sailed on graceful wing in 
rising circles till lost in the deep blue of heaven, and I have yet to see a Franklin 
gull. As I write, the skin of a beautiful specimen lies before me. The bird was 
shot out of a flock of fifty or more just like it, and there were hundreds of others 
of the same species about me at the time — California gulls, every one. 
And, not only has no Franklin gull come within range of my observation, 
but, so far as my knowledge extends, the species has not been taken in Utah. Mr. 
H. C. Johnson, of American Fork, this state, who has had several interesting arti- 
