McCORMICK'S SKUA. 69 



looking Skuas behind, which heavily took flight as the fishermen rose suddenly to their 

 feet. On another occasion, when cutting up a seal, we held out scraps of blubber which 

 were taken from our hands by Skuas on the wing. If any part of the seal was to be 

 kept we had to be careful to protect it. When the Sea-elephant was killed, its tongue 

 and eyeballs were set apart to be preserved in spirit, but both disappeared while the 

 rest of the skinning was being completed. Not only this, but a heavy pilot cloth 

 jacket had been dragged ten yards away by Skuas that disputed its possession, and 

 the sealskin sheath of a knife, about two feet long, was last seen hanging from the 

 mouth of a Skua as it flew away to sea. Nothing is sacred and nothing safe from such 

 clamorous thieves, and more than once they paid heavily for their pluck and curiosity. 



I have mentioned below the fighting that occurs at times between nestlings that 

 have but just emerged from the safety of their eggshells. This instinct is by no means 

 confined to the young. The old birds were always game to fight, and nothing more 

 was needed than to find themselves at close quarters in captivity, when the matter was 

 at once fought out. McCormick's Skua chooses for its nesting site the northern or 

 north-eastern face of some gravel-covered hillside, talus, or moraine cone, where the 

 snow has either never settled on account of the winter winds, or from which it has been 

 banished by the summer sun. We were able to inspect a score or more of their nesting 

 colonies. They breed almost invariably in groups or colonies, with the nests only 

 sufficiently widely separated to avoid unnecessary collision, which between birds of such 

 strong thieving and criminal tendencies leads to awkwardness. Often the colony is 

 situated close to and even mingling with a rookery of Adelie penguins. This is the case 

 at Cape Adare, where the Skuas nest on the screes and upland heights of the higher 

 ground in close companionship with the Adelie penguins that choose the high ground for 

 their nests. A thousand feet above the moraine flat at sea level, where the majority 

 of the penguins nest, may be found in close proximity both Skuas' and Penguins' nests 

 with eggs and young. Again, at Cape Crozier the Skuas were collected in a nesting 

 colony on the (M>m-strewn slopes of Mount Terror, overlooking many thousands of 

 Ade'lies' nests. So also at Wood Bay and at Cape Royds. The last-named rookery, one 

 of the smallest Adelie penguin rookeries we saw, was, strange to say, the largest of all 

 the Skuas' breeding colonies. Literally scores of nests could be discovered during a 

 day's tramp over the rocky cape. Nowhere flat, this little peninsula was extremely 

 rugged, both from the irregular weathering of a hard volcanic rock, and from the fact 

 that over it has run at some long distant period a huge ice-sheet, which has scooped it 

 out into little hills and valleys and terraced it with moraine heaps. Each of these little 

 hills or its adjacent valley was occupied by a pair of Skuas, and each little rise overcome 

 in a morning's walk from the camp laid one open to the noisy attention of another pair. 



Round and round one's head the one bird wheeled with a shrieking clatter, every 

 now and again dashing down as though to strike. From time to time the blow 

 took effect, and sometimes took one's cap off. Occasionally one might be surprised 

 by a sudden blow on the forehead, but always, and as far as I could judge 



