Til.] THE -'TJUFJO." 95 



bird eitlier drops what it has caught, which is then immediately 

 snappei up by the skua, or else settles down upon the surface 

 of the water, where it is protected against attack. The skua 

 besides eats eggs of other birds, especially of eiders and geese. 

 If the eggs are left but for a few moments unprotected in the 

 nest, it is immediately to the front and shows itself so voracious 

 that it is not afraid to attack nests from which the hatching 

 birds have been frightened away by men engaged in gathering 

 eggs only a few yards off. With incredible dexterity it pecks 

 a hole in the eggs and sucks their contents. If speed is 

 necessary, this takes place so quickly and out of so many eggs 

 in succession that it sometimes has to stand without moving, 

 unable to iiy further until it has thrown up what it had 

 swallowed. The skua in this way commonly takes part in 

 the plundering of every eider island. The walrus-hunters are 

 very much embittered against the bird on account of this in- 

 trusion on their industry, and kill it vvhenever they can. The 

 whalers called it " struntjaeger " — refuse-hunter — because they 

 believed that it hunted gulls in order to make them void their 

 excrements which " struntjaegeren " was said to devour as a 

 luxury. 



The skua breeds upon low, unsheltered, often water-drenched 

 headlands and islands, where il la3^s one or two eggs on the 

 bare ground, often without trace of a nest. The eggs are so 

 like the ground that it is only with difficulty that they can be 

 found. The male remains in the neighbourhood of the nest 

 during the hatching season. If a man, or an animal which 

 the bird considers dangerous, approaches the eggs, the pair 

 endeavour to draw attention from them by removing from the 

 nest, creeping on the ground and flapping their wings in the 

 most pitiful way. The bird thus acts with great skill a 

 veritable comedy, but takes good care that it is not caught. 



As is well known, we know only two varieties of colour in 

 this bird, a self-coloured brown, and a brown on the upper part 

 of the body with white below. Of these I have only once in 

 tlie Arctic regions seen the self-coloured variety, viz. at Bell 

 Sound in 18.58. All the hundreds of skuas which I have 

 seen, besides, have had the throat and lower part of the body 

 coloured white. 



This bird is very common on Spitzbergen and Novaya 

 Zemlya. Yet perhaps it scarcely breeds on the north part of 

 North-East Laud. Along with the bird now described there 

 occur, though sparingly, two others : — hreddjcrtnde labhen, the 

 Pomarine skua [Lestris 'jjomariTia , Tem.) and ^^'t'/ZaZ/^^cTi, Buffon's 

 skua (Lestris Bujfonii, Boie). The latter is distinguished by its 

 more slender build and two very long tail-feathers, and it is 

 much more common farther to the east than on Spitzbergen. 



