ADELIE PENGUINS 



The skuas had increased considerably in numbers 

 by November 4, and frequently came to the scrap- 

 heap outside our hut. Here were many frozen 

 carcasses of penguins which we had thrown there 

 after the breasts had been removed for food during 

 the past winter. The skuas picked the bones quite 

 clean of flesh, so that the skeletons lay white under 

 the skins, and it was remarkable to what distances 

 they sometimes carried the carcasses, which weighed 

 considerably more than the skuas themselves. I 

 found some of these bodies over five hundred yards 

 away. 



A perpetual feud was carried on between the 

 penguins and the skuas. The latter birds come to 

 the south in the summer, and make their nests 

 close to, and in some cases actually among, those of 

 the penguins, and during the breeding time live 

 almost entirely on the eggs, and later, on the chicks. 

 They never attack the adult penguins, who run at 

 them and drive them away when they light within 

 reach, but as the skuas can take to the wing and 

 the penguins cannot, no pursuit is possible. 



The skuas fly about over the rookery, keeping only 

 a few yards from the ground, and should one of them 

 see a nest vacated and the eggs exposed, if only for 

 a few seconds, it swoops at this, and with scarcely 

 54 



