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Next day two interesting observations were made; down by the shore I found the midden-heap of a Lemming family. It contained about four hundred pellets: their colour and dryness, with the absence of grass, showed that they dated from winter. In the evening the four of us witnessed the tragic end of a Lap-longspur. Pursued by a fierce Skua Gull, it unfortunately dashed out over the lake.
Then the skua came lightly down, rocking on the wind, and settled beside the poor, draggled, white body, no longer white, upon the shingle, which had been so foully done to death by gulls of various clans. He may, or may not, have known it, but I can tell you that the gull was the self-same herring-gull who had tried to kill him the day before. Now he but we will draw a curtain here.
We could easily capture these birds, and so it is evident that food can always be obtained in the pack. To-night I noticed a skua gull settle on an upturned block of ice at the edge of the floe on which several penguins were preparing for rest.
Then suddenly there was a scuffle below him in the dark. One of the rats squeaked a little, acknowledging receipt of a crab's pincers closed upon him, or her. Followed the sounds of some scuttering, confusion, and the horrible slide and scrape of horny shells upon stone. Then silence, and the skua knew that, in that wonderful way they have, the crabs, at any rate, were gone for the moment.
Towards the summit fluttered myriads of sea-fowl, and especially those of the web-footed species with long, flat, pointed beaks a clamorous tribe, bold in the presence of man, who probably for the first time thus invaded their domains. Pencroft recognized the skua and other gulls among them, the voracious little sea-mew, which in great numbers nestled in the crevices of the granite.
With the return of spring, Skua gulls and penguins had become plentiful and in answer to the professor's entreaties the boys finally stopped the sledge near a rookery of the latter, in which the queer birds were busy over the nests. These nests are rough piles of stones, on which the eggs are laid.
Large black geese, too heavy for lofty flying, rise awkwardly from the waves and skim across the fjords, just clearing the surface of the dark blue waters. Oyster-catchers, as they are familiarly called, decked with scarlet bills and legs, are abundant. Now and then that daring highwayman among birds, the skua, or robber-gull, is seen on the watch for a victim.
This act of piracy has earned for the skua its West Country sobriquet of "Jack Harry," and against so fierce an onslaught even the largest gull, though actually of heavier build than its tyrant, has no chance and seldom indeed seems to offer the feeblest resistance.
Next morning, an apparition of wonder and fierce beauty, the skua, quite recovered except that he had a lameness in one leg and a weakness in one wonderful eye that would last him a lifetime, came racing down-shore out of a stormcloud into the full gold of the sun at some seventy miles an hour. He was in pursuit of a common gull who, with more luck than judgment, had caught a fish.
Sea east of Cape Armitage pretty well covered with ice; some open pools sea off shore west of the Cape frozen in pools, open lanes close to shore as far as Castle Rock. Bays either side of Glacier Tongue look fairly well frozen. Hut still dropping water badly. Held service in hut this morning, read Litany. One skua seen to-day.
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