The miracle of the gulls is an 1848 event often credited by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for saving the second harvest of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. While absent in contemporary accounts, later accounts stated seagulls miraculously saved the 1848 crops by eating thousands of insects that were devouring their fields. The first crop was planted in 1847 a few days after the pioneers entered the valley, which was very late in the growing season and produced a meager but usable harvest. Next spring, using seed from the first harvest, they planted their second crop, only to watch in dismay as the crickets attacked. Less than two years earlier, in October 1846, many of them were saved by quail that flew into their camp, on their trek to the Great Salt Lake and made available as food.

The Mormon cricket is a large insect native to western North America in rangelands dominated by sagebrush and forbs. Anabrus is a genus in the shield-backed katydid subfamily in the Tettigoniidae family, commonly called katydids, bush crickets, and previously "long-horned grasshoppers". Its common name, "Mormon cricket", is a misnomer: true crickets are of the family Gryllidae.