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 groupsor 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 Adélie 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 Adélie 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 débris-strewn slopes of Mount Terror, overlooking many thousands of 
Adélies’ nests. So also at Wood Bay and at Cape Royds. The last-named rookery, one 
of the smallest Adélie 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. Hach 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 
