LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN GULLS 

 AND TERNS, ORDER LONGIPENNES. 



By Arthur Cleveland Bent, 

 of Taunton, Massachusetts. 



Family STERCORARIDAE, Skuas and Jaegers. 



CATHARACTA SKUA Briinnich . 



SKUA. 



HABITS. 



The following quotation from the graphic pen of Mr. F. St. Mars 

 (1912) gives a better introduction to this bold and daring species 

 than anything I could write, and his article, The Eagle Guard, from 

 which I shall quote again, is well worth reading as a striking char- 

 acter study : 



Then the scimitar wings shut with a crisp swish, and he became a statue in 

 dull, unpolished bronze, impassively regarding the polecat, who lay with her 

 back broken, feebly struggling to drag into cover. It is a shock to the human 

 nerves to see the life blasted out of a beast almost 'twixt breath and breath ; 

 what one moment is a gliding, muscular form, instinct with life and energy, 

 confident in power, and the next moment a crumpled heap of fur, twitching 

 spasmodically. But it was a searchlight on the reputation of the eagle guard 

 and the stories one had heard anent the superstitions of the natives. 



The polecat, being hungry with the gnawing hunger of a mother and pre- 

 suming on a swirl of mist, had tried to steal up the knoll to the two great eggs 

 that lay in the hollow atop all unguarded. Had come then a thin, high, whirring 

 shriek, exactly like the noise made by a sword cutting through the air, and a 

 single thud that might have been the thud of a rifle bullet striking an animal. 

 Then — well, then the scene described above. 



Big, powerfully built, brown with the black brown of his own native peat 

 bogs, armed to the teeth, long and slash-winged, whose flight feathers were like 

 the cutting edge of a sword, insolent with the fine, swelling insolence of power, 

 and greatly daring, no wonder men had chosen him as the eagle guard, this 

 mighty bird, this great skua of the naturalists, this Bonxie, mascot, and super- 

 stitious godling of the fishermen. Wah ! he was a bird. 



We know so little about the skua, as an American bird, that I 

 shall have to draw largely from European writers for its life history. 

 It is rare on the American side of the Atlantic Ocean, and is not 

 known to breed here regularly, although it probably does so occasion- 

 ally or sparingly in Greenland or on the Arctic Islands. 



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