§4 fHE INFANCY OF ANIMALS 



Occasionally one in passing will make a run at the skua 

 and drive him off for a moment ; but the chick is separated 

 from the rest, and the old penguin has no mind to stop 

 and shelter him, so back the skua comes to complete 

 his work. Literally, in a rookery such as that of Cape 

 Crozier, one cannot walk ten yards without coming on 

 a dead penguin chick. Many of these . . . are dried and 

 flattened mummies, trodden down and flattened into the 

 stones and guano that cover the ground. But an enormous 

 proportion are seen to be fresh victims if one visits a rookery 

 in January, when the skuas have not only themselves but 

 their young to feed." 



" But," he further remarks, " the skua even robs its 

 own kind, and in a nesting colony of some twenty or 

 thirty birds, the numbers that have apparently lost their 

 eggs, or one at least, by robbery is always fairly large. 



A further factor in keeping down the numbers of the 

 skuas is the pugnacity of their own nestlings. Never 

 exceeding two in number, in each nest these chicks, 

 while yet in their downy plumage, will " fight tooth and 

 nail with one another over some trivial bit of food, locked 

 each to the other by every claw, and fighting with loud 

 squalls as they use their tiny beaks." As a result of 

 this unseemly brawling, and partly because of the tendency 

 of the young to wander, sooner or later to get snapped 

 up by some cannibalistic neighbour, the numbers of the 

 skuas are still further kept in check. But for these facts 

 probably the skuas would long since have exterminated 

 the penguins — and incidentally themselves. 



The ghoulish work of the skuas, however, only accounts 

 for a fraction of this enormous death-rate, which seems to 

 be due in part to the stupidity of the parents, and in part 

 to the conditions of the environment making overcrowded 



