Fig. 71. “Leapt at one another into the Air”
Fig. 72. A Skua by its Chick
When one of the parent Skuas is on the ground near its nest, on the approach of anyone it throws its head back, opens its wings, and loudly proclaims its whereabouts with its raucous cawing notes. When hovering over food, and at other times when not alarmed or angry, the sounds made by a Skua are very like those of the common Herring Gull, and not altogether unmusical at times, especially when making the little shrill piping note, by which I have often thought that gulls so nearly imitate the squeaking of a block in its sheaf.
When the penguin chicks are hatched, the Skuas prey upon these in a most cruel manner, and should a chick wander away from the protecting old birds, a Skua is almost certain to pounce upon and kill it. This it does by pecking its eyes out, after which, with powerful strokes of its beak, it gets to work on its back and quickly devours the kidneys.
The dead bodies of hundreds of chicks are seen strewn about the rookery, and especially in the neighbourhood of the Skuas' nests, as very often they carry them there. All these dead chicks are seen to have two holes picked through their backs, one on each side, corresponding to the position of each kidney.
Besides the penguins' eggs and young, there is another fruitful source of food for the Skuas to be found along the Antarctic coasts at the early part of the year, and that is during the time when the seals are bringing forth their young upon the sea-ice. The Skuas attend upon them then, and devour the after-births. In the second volume of the Discovery reports Dr. Wilson mentions that large numbers of Skuas were noticed at Granite Harbour, and I have no doubt that they had congregated there for this purpose, as when passing the spot on a spring journey along the sea-ice in 1912, we saw many hundreds of Weddell seals with their young. So many were there, that as we lay in our sleeping-bags during the night, the bleating of the little calves near our tents conveyed to our half-awakened senses the impression that we were in the midst of lambing fields at home!