Bird Sightings: Great Skua

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Bird Sightings : Hebrides : Great Skua

Great Skua (Bonxie)

Stercorarius skua

Gaelic:Fasgadair mór

Photograph © Debbie Bozkurt
Stornoway - Isle of lewis - Outer Hebrides (Western Isles)
3rd June, 2007

"...a Great Skua sitting in the fields behind me at Marybank. Don't know who was more suprised him or me"

Stercorarius skua - Catharacta skua

AKA: Bonxie

Passage visitor, migrant breeder

9600 pairs UK in Summer BTO

Adults stout & dark, streaked grey-brown, black cap, juveniles warm-brown, unstreaked below, tail short & blunt. Flight direct & powerful. ID from other skuas: Herring Gull size, barrel chest, white wing flashes

Breeds: Western Isles, North Scotland, Faeroes, Iceland, Norway

Winters: North Atlantic, North & South America, Spanish Coast, Africa

Habitat: Coastal moorland, rocky islands, Winter: seacoasts

Diet: Fish from sea, other seabirds (kill to size great black-backed gull), piracy (robs terns, gulls, gannets!)

Listen to great skua RSPB site

Similar birds Arctic Skua, Pomarine Skua

Our great skua photographs :

Great skua
Great skua Great skua Great skua

Debbie's online photo album

Other local bird photographs

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