A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
skua
A skua is a heavy dark seabird that makes much of its living by robbery. It chases terns, gulls, gannets, and puffins in flight, harries them until they drop or disgorge their catch, and takes it in the air. It also hunts, scavenges, and raids nests, and it breeds on tundra and on subantarctic islands, where it defends a territory by striking the heads of anything that walks through it.
Etymology
The name came into English from Faroese, where the word for the great skua is imitative of its call. English also uses bonxie for the same bird, which is Shetland dialect and possibly Norse, and the North American name for the smaller species is jaeger, which is German for hunter.
Notes
The technical term for stealing another animal’s food is kleptoparasitism, and skuas are its most accomplished practitioners, along with frigatebirds. South polar skuas have been recorded at the South Pole itself, hundreds of miles from any food, apparently simply crossing the continent, which makes them among the most southerly birds ever seen.