ARCTIC SKUA. 
175 
droit du ph(s fort presses somewhat too heavily : its flight is 
then performed in short and undulating starts. While pursu¬ 
ing its usual undulating progress, it flies sometimes very 
quick, and at others as slow, and there is hardly a bird whose 
flight is more varied, or kept up for a greater length of time 
without taking rest. At times this species rests by swimming- 
on the watery surface, but does not remain long in that pos¬ 
ture. When the Arctic Skua alights upon the shore, it runs 
about for some time in the same manner as the plovers. 
The Arctic Skua is said to breed on the shores of Scandi¬ 
navia, the western shores of Greenland, and in Newfoundland, 
where it is exceedingly numerous ; it also breeds on the 
swamps of the great rivers of Siberia. 
Its eggs are two in number, as represented in our Plate. 
The Arctic Skua measures twenty-two inches from the tip 
of the beak to the extremity of the middle tail-feathers ; the 
beak, one inch nine lines ; the wing, eleven inches nine lines ; 
the tarsus, one inch six lines. 
The adult bird has the chin, cheeks, sides of the neck and 
breast, pale ochrous yellow; the belly, yellowish white, passing, 
upon the flanks and vent, into greyish brown ; the feathers of 
the hinder part of the neck are wiry and pointed ; the crown 
of the head, nape, back, quills, tail, and under tail-coverts 
are dusky, tinged with grey; the head, quills, and tail the 
darkest; the shafts of the quills and tail-feathers are almost 
white from their base to near the tip ; the beak is bluish at 
the base and black at the tip ; the legs are partly blue and 
partly black; the feet entirely black in living specimens, but 
the blue coloured portions become straw yellow in preserved 
specimens ; the eyes are chestnut brown. 
The young bird of the year has the head and neck pen¬ 
cilled with clove brown on a pale yellow ground ; the upper 
plumage clove brown, with pale yellow tips to the feathers, 
