[Written by Chuck Almdale, photos by Marie Barnidge-McIntyre, Femi Faminu & Armando Martinez]

Marie Barnidge-McIntyre was birding at Malibu Lagoon on Sunday, 4 Jan 2026, when she spotted a small gull with black bill, black legs, very dark wings and a dark smudge on the side of the face. She concluded it was a Laughing Gull.

Unfortunately, a beach-saunterer came along just then, walked right up to the bird and off it flew.

But, it landed and Marie rushed over to get a photo, when up came the beach-saunterer and again scared it away. Frustration, thy name is rare-bird-on-the-beach-photography. This time it flew off to the far side of the lagoon outlet channel, uncrossable and bone-chilling cold, so Marie headed back to the highway and the bridge over the creek and back up to the beach next to the pier. Along the way she ran into Femi Faminu, another member of SMBAS, and off they went to re-re-find the gull. They were successful and here’s the proof.

I received only one photo from Marie, but Femi sent me a few additional shots of the same bird. Even the chunk of kelp below the bird’s tail is the same chunk of kelp, and the algae-green angled rock is the same rock. Only the water level changed, due to waves.

I believe they also ran into Walter Lamb while looking at the bird. I checked eBird and found this photo of two Laughing Gulls, same place and time. I lifted the photo below from his eBird checklist. I hope he doesn’t mind.

I think the right-hand bird is the same individual as Marie & Femi’s bird because of the funny striping eye-to-eye over the crown. Walter also had seven Black Oystercatchers, which must be a record for the lagoon.

Laughing Gulls aren’t really rare, maybe terribly uncommon is a better descriptor. They regularly spend the off-breeding season on the west coast of Baja California, and it’s not all that far from mid-Baja to SoCal, but they just don’t seem to make the trip very often. In this case, it seemed to take a heavy multi-day atmospheric-river-caused rainstorm to motivate one (or more) to fly north. We’ve never seen one at the lagoon on our hundreds of SMBAS monthly walks. In fact, eBird lists only seven sighting of Laughing Gull at Malibu Lagoon, and five of those were of this bird on this day.

But they do show up in Southern and Middle California from time-to-time as you can see below.

As luck would have it, this was not the only sighting. The following day Armando Martinez spotted one down at Ballona Creek, adjacent to the Marina del Rey main channel. Take a look at the photos below.

This is not the same bird as the one Marie and Femi saw. Especially notable are the differences in the dark areas on head, neck and breast.

Could Armando’s bird been Walter Lamb’s second bird, or is this a third bird?

It probably doesn’t mean anything, but we seem to have had an recent rash of uncommon small gull sightings at the lagoon. For example:

Sep 28 2025: Sabine’s Gull 13.5″
Nov 23 2025: Boneparte’s Gull 13.5″
Dec 28 2025: Short-billed Gull 16-18.5″
Jan 4 2026: Laughing Gull 16.5″

Maybe we should keep our eyes open for Little, Ross’s, Franklin’s and Ivory Gulls. Especially the Little Gull.