Antarctic or South Polar Skua Chicks
- Catharacta
maccormicki
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Skua chicks leave the nest very quickly
after hatching, once the chick has a covering
of down and is able to regulate its own temperature it
spends much of its time alone rather than with the
parents, though one will nearly always be in view to
protect it. The best indication you are getting close to
a skua chick is that you start getting dive-bombed by
the adults. If you look carefully around you at ground
level while this is going on, not easy as the parents
are rather large and noisy with a worryingly pointy
beak, you may see the chick keeping its head down and
scurrying away out of sight behind a rock or something
similar to hide it.
The colour of their down and feathers makes them
very difficult to see even against a contrasting
background as it is a sort of generic rock/brown
vegetation colour.
Photo; © Paul Ward - Pictures taken on Signy Island, South Orkneys, Antarctica.