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Sabine's Gulls are small, black-headed gulls. They take one year to reach maturity, so there are two different phases of plumage. During the breeding season, they have a dark-grey front half of the head (NOT the nape of the neck), a mid-grey mantle and white underparts, neck and rump. The bill is mostly dark-grey, with a yellow tip. The eyes have dark irises. During the breeding season they are surrounded by very thin red rings. In eclipse the head turns mostly white, while the nape of the neck becomes slate-grey. Otherwise they remain unchanged. In all plumages the wingtips show a broad black bar, with white spots on the tips of the primaries. This is also visible when the wings are folded. These dark tips on long wings, together with a forked tail, give them a "long, pointed stern" when perched or floating on water. In all plumages the legs and feet are dark-grey. In flight, the wings show a black outer bar, a grey inner wing tapering off towards the carpal joint, which leaves the rest of the upperwing look like a white triangle, with its base along the trailing edge. Juveniles have a small white "face", mid-grey ear coverts, cap and nape of the neck and flanks. The back is slate-grey with neat pale scales (tips of the wing feathers).

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of Sabine's Gull is available HERE .

Sabine's Gulls are a strongly migratory species of the Arctic and the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean. Their breeding range is a circumpolar ring spanning the High Arctic, where they nest in tundra on the northern fringes of North America and Eurasia and in parts of Svalbard and northern Greenland. They spend the rest of the year at sea. Their winter grounds are off the Pacific coast of Ecuador, Colombia and northern Peru (sometimes as far southward as Cape Hoorn) and off southern and south-western Africa, from South Africa to Angola. During their migration they can be found in much of the Atlantic Ocean (except the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, the Gulf of Guinea and the southernmost part), and in parts of the Pacific Ocean, from the Aleutian Islands to the Galapagos Islands, towards the north-western South American coastline. Note that during migration they "take short cuts" and can be found crossing the North American continent and, although less common, are also occasionally found in inland Europe.

In Europe Sabine's Gulls are found as vagrants during their migration, mostly along the Atlantic coastline, from northern Norway to Gibraltar. However, they are known to also occasionally migrate across the continent, as far from the coastline as Hungary.

Sabine's Gulls are a predominantly coastal or pelagic species. They breed in Arctic tundra and spend most of the rest of the year, including the northern winter, on the wing above sea.

J. Pires reports spotting a Sabine's Gull on a pelagic off Sagres, Algarve, Portugal, in October 2020. All sighting and photographic information presented on this page has kindly been contributed by J. Pires.