-McCORMICK’S SKUA. 67 
attacking one another or the smaller petrels on the wing till the weaker disgorges 
what he has eaten. 
Again, in Granite Harbour, on the west coast of McMurdo Sound, we found them 
nesting, with young and even eggs, though it was so late as January 20th. We then 
crossed over to Cape Crozier, where many Skuas nest, and practically live on the 
Adélie penguins of the enormous rookery there, and here we saw the bird settle 
deliberately on a healthy penguin chick and peck its eyes out. 
On January 31st we were at the extreme eastern end of the Great Ice 
Barrier of Ross, and off the new land, now called King Edward VII.’s Land, we 
procured three Skuas, which on the same day provided us with examples of the two 
extremes of colour variation and an intermediate form. One bird was uniformly dark 
all over, another was weathered and bleached, with an almost white head and breast 
and white splashes on the back and mantle, while the third was a stage between the 
two. This variability has nothing whatever to do with sex, but much to do with 
age and moult. The moult which replaces the bleached and whitened feathers is 
apparently more complete and rapid in the young than it is in the older birds. 
Returning along the Barrier we saw that the Skuas were almost as constant 
in their attendance on the seals as they were upon the penguins. So late as 
February 9th they still had nestlings in down, and on this day we reached our winter 
quarters in McMurdo Sound. We then had bad weather for some days, and on the 
11th we found that these young ones had succumbed. Probably this is the fate of 
the majority of late broods. I believe there would be no late eggs or second 
broods at all were it not that so many of the first are destroyed and eaten by their 
neighbours. 
The number of Skuas increased largely day by day as we killed seals round the 
ship for food, and there were at no time less than twenty or thirty flying over the 
dog-kennels on Hut Point. At the end of March they began their migration north- 
ward, and finally disappeared on the 30th, to be seen no more till the following spring. 
This Skua is of a sociable disposition, notwithstanding its cannibal tendencies, feeding, 
nesting, and basking in the sun in groups. It is, moreover, a very cleanly bird, and 
repeated search failed to reveal an external parasite of any kind. It is particularly 
fond of bathing in the thaw-water pools among the hills where the snow is melted by 
the heat absorbed from the sun’s rays by the adjacent rocks. Round and in these 
pools a group of Skuas might always be found, and the abundance of their feathers at 
the edge testifies to the habit (see fig. 42, p. 68). In the adjacent snow their 
tracks are found, and here and there a pattern in the hardened surface that might 
puzzle anyone who had not watched them there (see fig. 40, p. 56). Just ahead of 
two footmarks is a fan-shaped series of linear scoop-marks, made by the bird’s beak 
as it squats comfortably on the snow and proceeds to satisfy its thirst by eating it. 
The Skua has no doubt good sight, but its sense of smell must be little short of 
marvellous. When on a sledge journey to the south with Captain Scott, on Ross’ 
