I’m Frank Corrado. Average Weight: 900 - 1600 g, males are usually a little smaller and lighter than females Average Length: 50 - 55 cm, wingspan 130 - 140 cm Breeding Season: Breeds in snow free areas from November to January.
Wildscreen's Arkive project was launched in 2003 and grew to become the world's biggest encyclopaedia of life on Earth. South Polar Skua, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, 13th September 2011. This is an excellent time of year for such sought-after species as Black-footed Albatross, Ashy Storm-Petrel, South Polar Skua, and Scripps’s Murrelet. South Polar Skuas tend to be slighter in the body, thinner in the bill, smaller in the head, and narrower in the wings than other Skuas. They are huge an bulky compared to Jaegers. Near the peak of spring migration. Scarce migrant seabird found offshore; unlikely to be seen from land. The south polar skua is a stocky gull-like bird that is about 21 inches in length.


It has a thick neck; a short, broad tail; a thick, hooked, black bill and black legs. An older name for this bird is MacCormick’s Skua . This second-cycle (or older) bird, just completing its primary moult shows a number of features indicative of South Polar, including smooth scalloping on the flanks and a pale collar. Sign in to see your badges. ### Brown Skua is very similar in build, but slightly different in plumage. Other articles where South Polar skua is discussed: Antarctica: Birds: South Polar (McCormick’s) skua—breed exclusively on the continent or on nearby islands. An older name for the bird is MacCormick's skua, after explorer and naval surgeon Robert McCormick, who first collected the type specimen.This species and the other large Southern Hemisphere skuas, such as the great skua, are sometimes placed in a separate genus Catharacta. POWERED BY MERLIN. South Polar Skua Stercorarius maccormicki It occurs regularly off both our coasts, but this predatory seabird nests only far to the south of us, around the edges of the Antarctic continent.

The South Polar Skua, Stercorarius maccormicki, is a large seabird in the skua family Stercorariidae. South Polar Skua Stercorarius maccormicki (right) and Great Skua Stercorarius skua (left), Galicia, September 2019. What’s a bird to do with such a bad reputation? The great skua, or bonxie, is a bird about 60 cm (24 inches) long, resembling a gull but heavily built, with a brownish body and large, white wing patches.

In winter months, the South Polar Skua migrates south to the Pacific Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The skua’s annual appearance in the fall is part of an immense, annual clockwise migration, north from Antarctica to Japan, and then back south along the edge of North America. The South Polar skua is, alongside the southern giant petrel, a top avian predator in the Antarctic. It is the only bird that breeds both in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. Males and females look alike. Scarce migrant seabird found offshore; unlikely to be seen from land. Penguins, of the order Sphenisciformes, symbolize this polar region, though they live… Males and females look alike. Usually seen as single birds, flying directly and strongly low to high above the sea, or resting on the sea, often with rafts of shearwaters. This species and the other large southern hemisphere skuas, together with Great Skua , are sometimes placed in a separate genus Catharacta . It has a dull brownish-gray body with white patches on its outer wings. Light phase adult has pale gray-brown head and underparts. Even sat on the water, when the structure is not so assessable, this bird is bloody striking.