I saw my first south polar skuas, Catharacta maccormicki, immediately after arriving at Scott Base in November 1959. They seemed like rather big, drab, noisy gulls as they scavenged and loitered around the dog lines. Not all that impressive. It wasn’t until I got to Cape Royds, 20 minutes up the coast of Ross Island by helicopter, to work with Rowley Taylor on the skuas and Adélie penguins in that area that I began to appreciate them. There they were in their true element, holding breeding territories, flying about the penguin colony, beating to and fro against the winds. At that time it was pretty much assumed that skuas depended on the penguins for their food over summer, and it was this assumption that made them such villains in the eyes of early expedition members.

After just a day or two at Cape Royds I found this view farcical. There were skuas nesting all over the open ground from Cape Barne to Horseshoe Bay, yet the only ones that had access to the penguins were the six pairs with territories overlapping the penguin colony. All the others had to be feeding at sea, the only other resource available to them (not counting the dumps and dog lines at McMurdo and Scott Bases). The rest of that first summer, and five later summers at Cape Bird, site of a much larger penguin colony near the northern end of Ross Island, were taken up with a study of skua feeding and breeding biology.

Skuas generally get a bad press and are compared unfavourably with penguins. It is true that they kill penguin chicks, which is what upsets most visitors to the colonies, and through ineptitude this is sometimes a drawn-out, gory business. As if that isn’t enough, they’re also uncompromising in defence of their own nests and chicks, and use their legs to deliver stinging fly-by attacks on anyone who walks through their territory. Even so, they don’t deserve the opprobrium heaped on them, as encapsulated by this, from the pen of some early biologists: “The drama of Antarctic bird life is not without its villain. Theft and pillage, murder, cannibalism, infanticide, these crimes are all in the repertoire of the South Polar Skua.”

What did they expect in a predatory seabird? Sweetness and light? These are creatures engaged in a fierce struggle to survive and rear their chicks in an unforgiving habitat. Their breeding success is so low that their very survival on the continent is at all times precarious. And there is much more to them than theft, pillage, murder, cannibalism and infanticide. Their toughness, fierceness in defence, foraging skill at sea, and remarkable powers of flight and navigation must also be considered. These are qualities that make skuas birds to be admired.