Ross's Gull

Rhodostethia rosea

Pink-tinged ghost of the high Arctic, breeding in places almost no one visits. A sighting south is a lifetime event.

Population: Roughly 15,000-70,000 mature individuals (global estimate c.25,000-100,000 total individuals; BirdLife rates the underlying data quality as poor, and population trend is listed as unknown)
Habitat: Breeds on marshy Arctic tundra around ponds and river deltas, nesting on drier hummocks/tussocks with grasses, sedges, dwarf willow/alder and reindeer moss; winters along the edges of pack ice and in open leads of the Arctic Ocean
Fun fact: Unlike almost every other Arctic bird, many Ross's Gulls migrate NORTH into the Arctic Ocean in autumn rather than south, a puzzling reverse movement first documented by huge counts passing Point Barrow, Alaska; the species' breeding grounds themselves went undiscovered by scientists until 1905, near Pokhodsk in northeastern Siberia (found by Sergei Buturlin).
Range: Breeds in the high Arctic of northeastern Siberia (Taymyr Peninsula to the Kolyma River), with small, irregular numbers in Greenland and Arctic Canada; winters at the pack-ice edge in the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, Kamchatka, and other Arctic/sub-Arctic waters, with occasional vagrants reaching temperate Europe or North America
Diet: Small fish, crustaceans, mollusks, marine worms, and other invertebrates picked from open water or mudflats/ice edges in the non-breeding season; largely insectivorous on the breeding grounds, taking midges, caddisflies, and other insects
Size: 0.3 m
Wingspan: 0.95 m
Lifespan: 20 years

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