McCORMICK’S SKUA. 73 
Then, too, they hunt for themselves at sea and on the shore, picking up anything 
they can find in the shape of fish and crustaceans. They also hunt birds of other 
species, petrels, for example, and force them to disgorge what they have eaten. This 
they also do with one another. They are particularly partial to the eggs and young 
of the Adélie Penguin, and it is their taste for these that in most cases determines 
their choice of a nesting site. 
The Skuas’ real harvest begins as soon as the Adélie Penguin lays its eggs, and 
the abundance of empty shells about a rookery would be sufficient proof if other 
testimony were absent. But the Skua even robs its own kind, and in a nesting colony 
of some 20 or 80 birds, the number that have apparently lost their eggs, or one at 
least, by robbery is always fairly large. I have seen a Skua dash down upon an 
unprotected nest—a Skua’s nest—to pick up an egg with its bill with hardly a moment’s 
pause, one might almost say that it was done while on the wing, as the avenging 
owner of the nest was down on the intruder like a flash, and the stolen egg dropped 
from a height at our feet disclosed the remains of a half-incubated chick. 
That “dog won’t eat dog” is untrue in the south, not only of the sledge-dogs 
but of the Skuas. Mr. Ferrar gave me a further instance. Near the rookery we killed 
a Sea-elephant on the beach, and on cutting him up were surrounded by some dozens 
of skuas, which were soon sitting on all the small headlands around us gorged with bits 
of blubber. Notwithstanding this abundance of a very favourite food, a nestling 
Skua which had wandered to the beach was seen, seized, and carried out to sea by 
one of the Skuas, followed by a clamouring crowd, all eager to rob the owner of its 
prey. It is when the Adélie Penguins have hatched their eggs, however, that the Skua 
has least trouble in procuring his food. Pouncing upon some unprotected young 
penguin he attacks its eyes, and soon has the victim at his mercy. 
Hanging round the rookery, with the unmistakable look of a thief, the Skua will 
run up to a chicken almost as big as himself, drag it by degrees away from the more 
crowded part of the rookery, and then gradually worry it to death; eventually tearing 
a ragged hole in the skin of the back over the kidneys,* which are generally the 
first, and often the only parts that are touched. The penguin chick pipes his 
loudest, but the old birds standing round take very little notice. 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, as one would expect in a climate where decay is very slow, are dried 
and flattened mummies, trodden down and trampled 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. 
* Cf. Potts, in ‘ Zoologist,’ 1881, p. 298, on the Kea.—F. J. B. 
