© Amar AyyashAn adult ivory gull, pure white with yellow tip on black bill, sits in the parking lot at the Lake County Fairgrounds on Jan. 3, 2018.
Known throughout the nation as a gull expert and the administrator of the North American Gulls Facebook page, Ayyash of Orland Park has found plenty of rare gulls for birders to look at.
Still, Ayyash said it was pure luck that he discovered on a bitterly cold January day a very rare, small, all-white gull that flew into the parking lot and landed next to his car near several other much more common gull species called herring gulls.
Ivory gulls nest in Russia, Greenland and Canada, and, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, spend winter on icy waters north of Newfoundland. The gull's population is estimated to be at the most 27,000 individuals in the world, according to Birdlife International.
"It's a dream bird," said Ayyash. "It's one of the holy grails. There are not a lot of people who get the chance to find their own ivory gull in the lower 48 states."
His discovery was only the fourth documented record of the bird in Illinois. Only one was an adult, while the other two were immature, according to state birding records.
Today and throughout the week, birders will be searching any bodies of water in the Chicago region to relocate the bird.
Even though Ayyash got the word out immediately via text, phone, Facebook messages and other e-communications, he was the only one who saw the bird on Jan. 3.
Birders including Jeff Sundberg and Brian Storvik of Grayslake, Ken Koonz of Volo and Steve Mulhall of Round Lake Beach, who came to see the bird as soon as they learned about it, had to console themselves with photos in Ayyash's camera.
Ayyash drove around the area trying to relocate it, cell phone at the ready. But by the end of the day, it had not been relocated.
Source: News-Sun
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