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Updated: June 6, 2025
Two skuas came round the camp at lunch, no doubt attracted by our 'Shambles' camp. Thursday, December 14. Camp 36. Indigestion and the soggy condition of my clothes kept me awake for some time last night, and the exceptional exercise gives bad attacks of cramp. Our lips are getting raw and blistered. The eyes of the party are improving, I am glad to say.
On either side of the gulls, and closely associated with them in habits and in structure, is a group of birds equally characteristic of the open coast, the skuas and terns.
Yesterday went to the second crater, Arrival Heights, hoping to see the condition of the northerly bays, but could see little or nothing owing to drift. A white line dimly seen on the horizon seemed to indicate that the ice drifted out has not gone far. Some skuas were seen yesterday, a very late date.
Friday, March 24, A.M. Skuas still about, a few very shy very dark in colour after moulting. Went along Arrival Heights yesterday with very keen over-ridge wind it was difficult to get shelter. In the evening it fell calm and has remained all night with temperature up to + 18°. This morning it is snowing with fairly large flakes.
This is the first of its kind that we have seen since January last, and it may mean a lot. It may signify that there is land somewhere near us, or else that great leads are opening up, but it is impossible to form more than a mere conjecture at present." No skuas, Antarctic petrels, or sea-leopards were seen during our two months' stay at Ocean Camp.
The skuas, darker and more courageous birds, are familiar to those who spend their August holiday sea-fishing near the Land's End, where, particularly on days when the east wind brings the gannets and porpoises close inshore, the great skua may be seen at its favourite game of swooping on the gulls and making them disgorge or drop their launce or pilchard, which the bird usually retrieves before it reaches the water.
These skuas rob their neighbours in every latitude; and even in the Antarctic one kind, closely related to our own, makes havoc among the penguins, an episode described by the late Dr. Wilson, one of the heroes of the ill-fated Scott expedition.
Several skuas seen three seals up in our Bay several off Pram Point in the shelter of Horse Shoe Bay. A great many fish on sea ice mostly small, but a second species 5 or 6 inches long: imagine they are chased by seals and caught in brashy ice where they are unable to escape. Came back over hill: glorious sunset, brilliant crimson clouds in west.
The tide is out, so we have lots of time. 'Can we really climb down there, said Harry, as they came to where a chasm opened in the line of cliff, with rough steps and ledges of rock standing out in the riven walls. Not a bird was to be seen in the gloomy crevasse; although the skuas and black-backed gulls were flying about and clamouring before the face of the cliff.
We saw a number of sea birds to-day, and two at least were skuas, black looking thieves among their white cousins. I saw one try to make a gull disgorge, driving up at it from below, to the gull's loudly-expressed disgust. It is a strange arrangement of nature, and I can't understand why a few gulls don't combine to defend themselves.
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