A fairly miserable day to
get fish out of the net. Note the two skuas waiting patiently
to pick up any tasty tit-bits that have also been brought up
with the net.
You often hear of how skuas are
hardened criminals with no sense of decorum and will mug small
children and old people for the slightest hint of food. However,
ours were far more refined and would sit and wait like this,
if nothing was forthcoming they would go on their way again.
We had two pairs of base-skuas,
the Reds and the Blues named for which side of the base they
lived, there was a skua landing pad outside the kitchen window,
painted red on one side and blue on the other. One side was
uphill (red) the other side downhill (blue). The skuas would
fly the couple of hundred meters from their nest to the pad
and get fed. If they were very fully fed, rather than make the
effort to fly home, they would sometimes just flap down to ground
level and walk home instead.
Paul Ward -
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