Sabine's gull steals eggs from nesting colonies of Arctic terns. The Sabine's gull is a small gull, in length and weighing . The wings are long, thin and pointed with a span of between . The bill, which is black with a yellow tip, is around long. This species is easy to identify through its striking wing pattern. The adult has a pale grey back and wing coverts, black primary flight feathers and white secondaries. The white tail is forked. The male's hood darkens during breeding season. Young birds have a similar tricoloured wing pattern, but the grey is replaced by brown,
Swallow-tailed gull photoreceptor cells. A study of melatonin levels of swallow-tailed gulls found them to have no measurable daily melatonin rhythm, whereas a day-feeding gull that was chosen for comparison had the expected higher night time melatonin level for day active birds. High melatonin levels generally make birds sleepy. It is still unknown whether the melatonin levels are a cause or an effect of the swallow-tailed gulls' nocturnal activity. The swallow-tailed gull is a near-endemic breeding bird of the Galápagos Islands, although a few pairs nest on Malpelo Island off the coast of Colombia. When not breeding, it is totally pelagic, flying