THE GREAT SKUA. 
‘.i55 
cerned. Tlie female is rather ligliter in colour than the male, 
and is by far the bolder of the two. During the breeding 
season the Skua will come to such close quarters with an 
intruder that I have known a man strike at one with a tether, 
and entangle it and bring it to the ground. 
The Skua is said to be good eating, — said at least by the 
good folk who say the same of the Kittiwake, &c. There is not 
much in its diet to recommend it to the epicure, for it is a fierce 
and formidable bird : not only does it compel other birds to 
supply its wants, by intercepting them when carrying fish, and 
taking it from them by force, but it will sometimes make a prey 
of the unfortunate bird itself instead of its fish, killing even 
birds as large as a Gull. The strong curved claws and powerful 
bill, hooked at the point, are weapons with which no bird that 
flies will care to have much to do, wielded as they are with such 
consummate daring. Indeed, the Skooi would have been lost 
to us before now, at any rate in Unst, had it not been for the 
feeling that its presence was a protection to the flocks against 
the Eagle, not even the Erne himself causing any alarm to a 
colony of the great Skuas, or being allowed to lord it in their 
domain. In size and weight we have nothing among the 
Laridae, save only the Greater Black-backed or the Glaucous 
Gulls, to surpass or even to rival this splendid bird. 
In 186S a Burrafirth man brought me on the 26th of 
September a Great Skua which he had shot as it flew over the 
loch of Cliff. It was a very dark specimen, with the legs and 
feet nearly black, tinged with olive green. It was apparently 
an adult female. The stomach was empty. This was a most 
unusually late occurrence of the bird. 
Skuas often procure food for themselves or their young by 
robbing the Gulls’ nests of the flsh which are carried there by 
the old birds. Bound one Skua’s nest I once found thirty-nine 
full-grown herrings, all headless. 
