Having lived in northern Utah from 1972-1992, I can tell you that the
"seagull" is a revered bird there. They forage in the fields and love to
eat locusts and grasshoppers (crop parasites). The term "seagull" is
probably derived from a generic term used for the several species of
Utah-resident (or seasonally resident) gulls from the original Mormon
pioneers.

Maureen E. Ellis (me2 at u.washington.edu; Seattle, WA, USA)
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On Wed, 13 Mar 1996 JLRosso at aol.com wrote:

> This started off innocently enough. It was mentioned to me at work that a
> certain multi-media encyclopedia currently states that the state bird of Utah
> is the Seagull. I was shocked, embarrassed and outraged all at the same time.
> How could such a terrible mistake be made? Very easy, I was told by my
> office-mates. Not everybody knows about birds, I was told. Thats not the
> point, I protested, this information is easy to get. Why didn't they check
> another source? To prove my point I went into another room where various
> collections of encyclopedias are stored. I looked in five different sets of
> encyclopedias (all 1995) and all five said that the seagull is the state bird
> of utah. I went down to the library and found five more sources, including
> the Columbia Concise Encyclopedia and the Random House Encyclopedia and they
> all stated that the seagull is the state bird of utah. My amazement grew.
> I talked to the fact-checker who is correcting this error. She told me that
> she called up Utah and was forwarded to a "wildlife specialist". She asked
> him what the state bird is, and he responded , the Seagull. (!) She asked him
> what kind of seagull and he finally responded that he thought it was the
> California Gull.
>
> I'm really not sure what to make of all of this. I have talked to a lot of
> people who have told me that they thought the seagull was a real species. But
> I find it amazing that so many legitmate sources would get this simple fact
> wrong. I wonder how many years they have been publishing this mistake.
>
> Oh yeah, if you were to look up "seagull" in this particular multi-media
> encyclopedia it would direct you to look under gull, where you will be told
> that seagull is a misnomer.
> The perils of dealing with information.
>
>
> Jim Rosso
> Issaquah
> 206-392-8440
>