“These birds fly all around your head all the time. Food is never the problem at Crozier, for penguins or skuas. They make their nests on tundra and islands, either in loose colonies or in solitary locations. But the poignant truth is that South Polar Skuas spend long, lonely lives watching their nests fail. Available for everyone, —Paul Siple and Alton Lindsey, scientists on the second Byrd expedition to Antarctica, 1933–35. What are Arctic Skua birthing rituals like? Perhaps its name should evoke resourcefulness and determination in one of the world’s most forbidding climates. The larger species, such as the great skua, also regularly kill and eat adult birds, such as puffins and gulls, and have been seen killing birds as large as a grey heron. What’s a bird to do with such a bad reputation? “Skuas look big, but they’re mostly just feathers,” Ainley says. But penguins are a limited-time food resource. Their anatomy is tuned for aerial thieving: short wings for quicker wingbeats, coupled with long primary feathers for forward thrust. Skuas get a bad rap as ruthless predators, but they have to be careful around Adelie Penguins. Skuas mate more or less for life. The birds are most aggressive after chicks hatch, Ballard says, when they smack intruders at full force with their clawed feet.

The chicks are stout-bodied and able to walk around the territory soon after they hatch, though they have to beware of skuas and penguins alike. It clears Crozier’s snow to expose rocky nest sites and pushes the sea ice offshore, allowing sunlight and nutrients to create a bonanza of krill and fish for the taking. The adults bring food—sometimes fish, sometimes penguin—to the little gray-white chick, feeding it tiny morsels. It mainly eats fish which is taken from the surface of the sea or from other birds. On the breeding groun… “The adults do okay [in winds] up to 80 or 90 mph,” Ballard says.

How fast do Arctic Skuas fly? Even in summer, he found, skuas mainly scavenged infertile eggs and the young chicks of inexperienced penguin pairs. Skuas are so much smaller than Adelies (weighing 3 pounds to an Adelie’s 10 or 12) that once a healthy penguin chick is more than about three weeks old, skuas are rarely a threat. The skua eats penguin eggs, baby penguins, and sometimes, old, weak penguins. The South Polar Skua is famous for only two things: stealing penguin eggs and eating penguin chicks. It may be time to rehabilitate the skewed image of the skua. It all adds up to a bird that can accelerate like a Porsche to attack a petrel or albatross, pestering it into giving up its catch. It’s the wind. They brought us a message from the living world into this realm of death. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen saw two skuas on his way back from discovering the pole in 1911, when his expedition was still 300 miles from open ocean. The female lays two eggs, but that’s almost always wishful thinking. For most of the year, skuas either catch fish themselves or—more often—steal fish from other birds. But the chicks are flightless.