Characteristics and living habits of skuas (air robbers)

Among the Antarctic seagulls, there is a kind of brown seagull called the skua. From its name, you will know that it is probably not a good thing. Some people call it an air bandit, which is not an exaggeration at all. Although its appearance is not very ugly, with clean brown feathers, a thick, shiny black beak, and piercing, round eyes, its habit of stealing and robbing gives people a sense of disgust.

Antarctic skua

The skua is the penguin's enemy. During the breeding season of penguins, skuas often attack penguin habitats unexpectedly and eat penguin eggs and chicks, causing birds to fly and break their eggs, making the neighbors uneasy.

Skuas are lazy eaters and get something for nothing. They never build their own nests. Instead, they use domineering tactics to seize other birds' nests, disperse other birds' families, and sometimes even viciously snatch food from the mouths of other birds and beasts. Once your belly is full, you hunker down and pass the time.

The lazy skua is not very strict in its choice of food. It doesn't matter whether it is good or bad, as long as it can fill its stomach. In addition to fish, shrimp and other marine life, bird eggs, baby birds, seal carcasses and bird and animal feces are all its delicious meals. The leftover meals and garbage discarded by the expedition team can also become its delicious delicacies. When it was hungry, it even got into the food bank of the research station, like a mouse, eating and drinking enough, and then grabbing a handful before leaving.

Long-tailed skua

What's even more abominable is that skuas bring a lot of trouble to scientific investigators. During field trips, if you are not careful, the picnic food you bring will be snatched away by skuas. When this happens, people can only sigh in despair. When people unknowingly approach its nesting site, it will attack desperately, chirping and flying around overhead, even swooping at people, grabbing, nagging, and sometimes pulling on people's heads. Shit, there is a strong possibility of driving away the expedition team members and destroying the scientific research station.

The skua has a strong flying ability. Perhaps it is due to the long-term training of theft. It is said that the Antarctic skua can also fly to the North Pole and live there.

During the Antarctic winter, a small number of skuas overwinter on the southern subantarctic islands. One of its wintering grounds is around China's Antarctic Great Wall Station, where ice and snow are everywhere. Not only are the small patches of land exposed during the summer months covered in snow, but large swaths of the ocean are also frozen. At this time, the life of the skuas was even more difficult. They had no nest to live in, no food to eat, and they could not fly far. They just stayed lazily near the research station and lived by eating the garbage on the station. People called them voluntary cleaners.

animal tags： Skua