MCCORMICK'S SKUA. 71 



We arrived at our winter quarters about tlie end of October, Ijut the Skuas did 

 not begin to lay their eggs till the beginning of December. In 1902 the first egg was 

 taken on December 9th, and in 1903 on December 2nd. The majority are laid by the 

 middle of December, and then ensues a period of four weeks for incubation. On New- 

 Year's Day the first young Skuas w^ere hatched, three nests had two chicks each just 

 hatched, and two nests had one egg hatched in each. The chick emerges with a 

 well-developed egg scale on the beak, which it sheds in a day or two. It is a mere ball 

 of pale slate-grey fluff", with pale blue beak and feet and legs ; the grey of the down 

 has much more blue in it than buff", and herein seems to lie a distinctive character 

 between the young of McCormick's Skua and the young of the more northern Antarctic 

 Skua. But it is well, in judging of slight differences in the shade of colour in 

 museum specimens, to remember how soon the bluish colour disappears, and is 

 replaced by a buff" or brownish-yellow tone, resulting from the almost unavoidal)le 

 absorption of a certain quantity of fat from the skin. 



By the middle of January it is difficult to find an egg unhatched, though in 

 Granite Harbour we found eggs so late as January 20th. The paired adults are 

 very friendly and have an obvious mutual care for one another and their chicks. 

 As we were able to watch them from our tent door, camped out on Cape Royds 

 in January, 1904, we saw much that otherwise might liave escaped notice. The 

 pair that hatched out their young within a few yards of our tent never got 

 accustomed to our proximity. Each time as we left the camp or returned to it 

 we were assailed with an angry clamour. Nevertheless, the chicks were not removed, 

 nor were they led away. They were able to run at once on emerging from the 

 egg, and the two young ones soon got separated from one another. The parents 

 seem to know from the first that too much care and coddling will unfit them for 

 such a rigorous climate. Consequently one rarely sees the parent sitting on the 

 chicks. She will be somewhere close to them, but they themselves will be generally 

 some feet away from her, sunning themselves or taking shelter under the lee of a 

 neighbouring rock. The fact is that these two little chickens in their nest do not 

 agree. I have seen them a few days after hatching fight tooth and nail with one 

 another over some trivial l»it of food, locked 'each to the other by every claw, and 

 fighting with loud squeals as they used their tiny beaks. They are not fed, as are 

 so many birds, directly from the parent's bill or pharynx, but from the first they 

 pick up for themselves, and I have seen the parents put bits of regurgitated fish 

 and crustaceans on the ground for them to peck, thus treating them exactly as a 

 fowl of the barnyard treats her chickens. 



It is a noticeable fact in connection with this bird that only one of the two 

 hatched in a nest survives. This is connected with the tendency of the young 

 to wander and get separated, and also with their tendency to fight, and with the 

 instinct which teaches the parent to be chary of giving them too much nursing. 

 The consec|uence of all this is that while the mother is engrossed with one, the other 



