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The animal on the cover of Istio: Up and Running is Sabine’s gull (Xema sabini). After this small gull completes its breeding season in the arctic tundra environments of northern Alaska, Nunavat, and Greenland, populations then disperse to rich coastal feeding grounds off of northern South America and southwestern Africa.
Breeding adults have a dark gray head with a black ring at the base of the neck; extended wings are pale gray above with a black leading edge and a triangle of white in the interior. Adults also have red eyes, dark gray legs and feet, and a black bill with a yellow tip. First-year juvenile birds have duller plumage that features browns instead of the adult’s darker colors. These birds average just over 12 inches long (small in comparison to the more familiar herring gull, which averages two feet in length).
During nesting season, this small gull eats insects, but during the rest of its year, spent in coastal waters, its diet consists mostly of small fish, crustaceans, and plankton. These birds are drawn to sites where upwellings of cold currents—such as the Peru Current, off Peru’s northwest coast; and the Benguela, rising southwest of Africa—bring deep-water nutrients to the surface, creating a feeding bonanza for many types of sea life.
English scientist William Elford Leach named this bird for western science; its species name honors Edward Sabine, who first described it. Leach found this bird unique enough to require a new genus (it remains Xema’s only member), a judgment still disputed by some. An important figure in early nineteenth-century British zoology and taxonomy, Leach was known for a whimsical and personal approach to naming, at times using anagrams of the names of colleagues and acquaintances—though he also used names from classical mythology, choices more in line with his particular cultural as well as scientific traditions.
Many of the animals on O’Reilly covers are endangered; all of them are important to the world.
Color illustration by Karen Montgomery, based on a black and white engraving from British Birds. The cover fonts are Gilroy Semibold and Guardian Sans. The text font is Adobe Minion Pro; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is Dalton Maag’s Ubuntu Mono.