GREAT SKUA 



Stercorartus catarrhactes 



NLY one locality, the Shetland Islands, is known as a 

 breeding-place of the Great Skua in Great Britain ; in 

 Ireland there is no authentic record of it having nested. 

 For a long time incessant persecution drove it from 

 many of its stations in the Shetlands, but during the last 

 few years, owing to careful watching, it has gradually 

 begun to increase in numbers again. 



The Great Skua lives almost entirely on the sea and the rocky shores of the 

 sea-girt islands. It leads a solitary life, shunned by all the smaller gulls on 

 whom it preys, chasing them until they disgorge their hardly-earned food, and 

 attacking the weakly or wounded ones. Its food consists of fish chiefly, but 

 nothing comes amiss to it. It will devour half-rotten fish which has been 

 thrown up by the sea, and pounce down on the herrings thrown overboard by 

 the fishermen. It robs the nests of its smaller relatives, and devours both 

 eggs and young. In Shetland I saw a Great Skua or Bonxie, as it is called 

 there tearing a young Herring Gull to pieces while the frantic parents 

 screamed above but did not dare to come too close to the robber. 



The call-note of the Great Skua is a short ' ag-ag-ag' like that of the 

 larger gulls. At the nest the note is shortened into a deep ' guck-giick; and 

 when swooping down at an intruder it has a loud screaming cry, ' scoo-aaah.' 



When the breeding season is approaching the Great Skua is seen in pairs, 

 flying about their old nesting-haunts, or sitting on the summit of some 

 knoll. Towards the end of April they collect in small colonies at their 

 breeding-haunts, and the work of nest -building commences. The nests are 

 never placed very near together, and are rather untidy structures. A hollow 

 nearly a foot in diameter is trodden in the moss on the slope near the top 

 of some hill ; this is lined with bits of moss, a few feathers, and a good deal 



VOL. II. 2 K 121 



