gull-tormentor

Updated: May 20, 2025

Here he was no longer a wonderful phantom spirit of the storm, but just a bird that might have been passed over at first glance as simply a seagull. But not at a second glance. Men called this strange bird Richardson's skua, or Arctic skua, or lesser skua, or, officially, Stercorarius crepidatus, or, most unofficially, in the vernacular, "boatswain," or "man-o'-war," or "gull-tormentor."

F. St. Mars - The Way of the Wild