On 14 January 1978 Ronald L. Branson, Benjamin D. Parmeter, John Parmeter and I saw a British Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus graellsii) on the west side of Robert’s Lake, Monterey, Monterey Co., California, about 0.8 km inland from the Pacific Ocean beach. This is the westernmost record for the species in North America; the only previous western records are from Colorado, the Texas coast and the Northwest Territories (see Discussion).
The only race collected in North America is L. f. graellsii (American Ornithologists’ Union 1957, Jehl 1958, Mumford and Rowe 1963, Woolfenden and Schreiber 1974), although the Northwest Territories bird and one observed at Newburyport, Massachusetts (Finch 1976) were thought to be nominate fuscus.