Ornithologist Edmund Selous was fascinated by the feeding behaviour of the Arctic Skua. In his book, Bird Watching (1901), he describes it thus:
Suddenly a dusky form, slender and Swallow-like, though as large as a Pigeon, shoots over the rounded bastion of the heather.
Sweeping upwards as it nears the cliffs, it darts upon one of a group of gulls.
A second pirate follows.
With wild cries and long, gliding sweeps, they press and harass the larger bird, who, doubling, twisting, avoiding, dodging, but never resisting, utters again and again a cry of distress.
Its companions sweep and eddy about them, shooting athwart and between.
They protest, they cry to heaven, their wild voices mingle in harsh, discordant unison with the rock-dash of the waves, and the everlasting notes of the wind.
Suddenly something drops from the oppressed gull.
There is a sinking towards it of one of the dark shadows - swift beyond telling, but so soft that the speed is not realised.
The falling object is lost from view but then, almost with a jerk, the eye - or rather the brain - realises that it has been caught in the descent.
Empty, and now unregarded, the robbed bird sweeps on, and the pirates sweep back to the heather.
Who troubles over a robbed gull? What moral nemesis concerns itself with the wrongs of some cheated, done-to-death savage or tribe of savages?
Over both, there is some shrieking, some eloquence at the time, but both are soon lost in oblivion, the waves close over and the world jogs on.
Retribution, retributive justice - such fine things may exist, perhaps, but, if so, they are reserved for showier matters.
Had the Skuas robbed an Albatross, something, perhaps, would have happened.
Their sin might have found them out
Thus closes one of nature's wild dramas. The gulls are circling again now, and all is as before.
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