The gull-billed tern was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[2] Gmelin based his description on the "Egyptian tern" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds.

[4] The gull-billed tern was moved to the resurrected genus Gelochelidon based on a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2005.

The gull-billed tern is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

The gull-billed tern breeds in colonies on lakes, marshes and coasts (including bays and earthen levees).

It largely feeds on insects taken in flight, and also often hunts over wet fields and even in brushy areas, to take amphibians and small mammals.