98 BIRD WATCHING 



for a longer or shorter time they visit again, then 

 again separate, and so they continue to act, at longer 

 or shorter intervals, till one or other of them flies off 

 to sea. 



This system of making each other little visits and 

 then going away and remaining for some time apart, 

 seems a feature of the gull tribe generally, and it is 

 particularly marked in the case of the great skua. A 

 pair of these birds will each have its apartments, 

 so to speak, and, by turns, each will be the caller 

 on or the receiver of a call from the other. Either, 

 one will walk or fly directly over to where the other 

 is standing or reclining, or it will make several 

 circling sweeps before coming down beside it, or 

 else — for this is another fashion — each of them will 

 set out to call on the other, and meeting in the 

 centre between their respective places, have their 

 gossip there. 



However the meeting takes place, when the birds 

 are together one of them will commonly bow its head 

 down towards the ground in a heavy sort of manner, 

 whilst the other stands facing it with the head and 

 bill lifted into the air. All at once one of the birds — 

 usually, I think, the caller, if either has remained at 

 home — turns round, raises its wings above its back, 

 and holding them thus, makes a heavy sort of spring 

 or running leap forward along the ground. This it 

 does several times, lowering the wings each time that 

 it pauses, and raising them again to make the leap. 

 From this it might be thought that the bird flew 

 rather than leapt, but this, when I saw it, did not 

 appear to me to be the case. It did not fly, but 

 only jumped with the wings held up. The birds 



