Great Skua (Stercorarius skua) Photo by By Ómar Runólfsson – Great Skwatua – Catharacta skua – SkúmurUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15516838
Dear Readers, here we are at Red List Forty, and we’re just over half way through the 78 birds currently on the UK list of birds of Conservation Concern. Sadly, the list gets longer every year, and at this rate I’ll never get to the end, but here we are. And I thought that this week I’d feature one of the very few birds that I’ve ever been attacked by, though I only have myself to blame.
Great Skuas, like many seabirds, are very protective of their nests, so when we visited the island of Handa, off the west coast of Scotland, I shouldn’t have been surprised that these large birds were watching us with a jaundiced eye as we stumbled along the rocky paths. We were kept well away from the nest sites, but even so some of the parents were not pleased, flying up and then zooming past our ears in a display of aerial acrobatics that was most impressive, even if it made me fear for my sunhat. ‘Bonxies’, as Great Skuas are known across Scotland, are kleptoparasites, and will attack birds as large as gannets in an attempt to make them disgorge the prey that they’re trying to bring home for their nestlings. They are also fearsome predators of smaller seabirds themselves, and also take by-catch from fishing boats. Great Skuas really are piratical birds, big, strong, daring and adaptable. The Crossley Guide (which has something of a sense of humour) describes the Great Skua as a ‘heavy-bodied troublemaker’, and who could argue?
When Great Skuas first arrived in the Northern Isles (as recently as the 18th century) they were welcomed by crofters as these ferocious birds frightened away the ravens and white-tailed eagles who used to prey on their lambs. Alas, it was then found that the Bonxies themselves were eating the lambs, and so the islanders retaliated by taking the Bonxie chicks and fattening them up for the pot. Apparently Great Skua eggs were eaten on the island of Foula as recently as 1970 (illegally, but then it’s a long way to go to make an arrest). It could be argued that until recently there were plenty of Great Skuas to go around – it was estimated that the birds were killing up to 200.000 Kittiwakes every year in the 1990s. This was probably because the birds that the Great Skuas used to steal from, the puffins and gannets, were themselves affected by the crash in the sand eel population, which was one of the foundations of the food chain for all these creatures. Everything is connected, as we know.
Photo by By Erik Christensen – With permission from: Murray Nurse, Guildford , England, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9508570
So why are these seabirds, which were previously not causing any concern with regard to their UK population, suddenly on the Red List? The Great Skua has been badly hit by Avian Flu, with a number of the Scottish populations showing a drastic reduction in numbers. This is especially worrying as about 67% of Great Skuas breed in coastal areas of the UK. The disease has been devastating for a number of seabird species, with some terns losing an entire generation of fledglings to the disease. Let’s hope that numbers start to recover once the Avian Flu outbreak has peaked.
Photo by By T. Müller – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1838990
And I’m sure you’re all intrigued to know what a Great Skua sounds like. Here are some of the birds in Iceland, recorded by Stanislas Wroza. They sound rather charming and chucklesome to me.
And so, fingers crossed for this big bully of a bird, apex predator of a complex and dynamic ecosystem. And if you ever go to visit them, keep to the paths, and wear a stout hat.