McCORMICK’S SKUA. 71 
We arrived at our winter quarters about the end of October, but the Skuas did 
not begin to lay their eggs till the beginning of December. In 1902 the first egg was 
taken on December 9th, and in 1903 on December 2nd. The majority are laid by the 
middle of December, and then ensues a period of four weeks for incubation. On New 
Year’s Day the first young Skuas were hatched, three nests had two chicks each just 
hatched, and two nests had one egg hatched in each. The chick emerges with a 
well-developed egg scale on the beak, which it sheds in a day or two. It is a mere ball 
of pale slate-grey fluff, with pale blue beak and feet and legs; the grey of the down 
has much more blue in it than buff, and herein seems to lie a distinctive character 
between the young of McCormick's Skua and the young of the more northern Antarctic 
Skua. But it is well, in judging of slight differences in the shade of colour in 
museum specimens, to remember how soon the bluish colour disappears, and is 
replaced by a buff or brownish-yellow tone, resulting from the almost unavoidable 
absorption of a certain quantity of fat from the skin. 
By the middle of January it is difficult to find an egg unhatched, though in 
Granite Harbour we found eggs so late as January 20th. The paired adults are 
very friendly and have an obvious mutual care for one another and their chicks. 
As we were able to watch them from our tent door, camped out on Cape Royds 
in January, 1904, we saw much that otherwise might have escaped notice. The 
pair that hatched out their young within a few yards of our tent never got 
accustomed to our proximity. ach time as we left the camp or returned to it 
we were assailed with an angry clamour. Nevertheless, the chicks were not removed, 
nor were they led away. They were able to run at once on emerging from the 
egg, and the two young ones soon got separated from one another. The parents 
seem to know from the first that too much care and coddling will unfit them for 
such a rigorous climate. Consequently one rarely sees the parent sitting on the 
chicks. She will be somewhere close to them, but they themselves will be generally 
some feet away from her, sunning themselves or taking shelter under the lee of a 
neighbouring rock. The fact is that these two little chickens in their nest do not 
agree. I have seen them a few days after hatching 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 squeals as they used their tiny beaks. They are not fed, as are 
so many birds, directly from the parent’s bill or pharynx, but from the first they 
pick up for themselves, and I have seen the parents put bits of regurgitated fish 
and crustaceans on the ground for them to peck, thus treating them exactly as a 
fowl of the barnyard treats her chickens. 
It is a noticeable fact in connection with this bird that only one of the two 
hatched in a nest survives. This is connected with the tendency of the young 
to wander and get separated, and also with their tendency to fight, and with the 
instinct which teaches the parent to be chary of giving them too much nursing. 
The consequence of all this is that while the mother is engrossed with one, the other 
