© 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.
If anyone deserves to find an ivory gull at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Grayslake, it's Amar Ayyash.
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."
Comment: Chicago hasn't seen a cold snap this long (12 days) since 1936 and 1895 before that, with areas reaching 21 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. There's a wind chill warning for the rest of the weekend in the northeast, where temps may drop as low as 45 below with the wind chill: The past 2 weeks have seen daily record lows in the area.