The South Polar Skua

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

A flash of feathers caught the corner of my eye, and I turned just in time to see the skua swoop down over the woman’s white hair, her reflexes not quick enough to keep the skua from knocking her dinner plate from her hands.

I once read the skua described as the mafia boss of the family of sea gulls to which it belongs. It is certainly the bully of the Antarctic, at least as far as our daily lives our concerned. The truth is, the Antarctic is full of bullies. The scene of the Great Albatross swooping down and plucking a chick right out of March of Penguins is memorable. The Leopard seal is a vicious predator, legendary among old polar explorers for chasing the shadows of men on the ice, ready to snatch anyone who wandered close enough to the ice edge. The latest gem from the BBC, Frozen Planet, includes some incredible footage of Orcas swimming in synch to wash a seal from its floe. No, the Antarctic is certainly not a docile environment when it comes to wildlife. Among the predators, however, it is the skua that is perhaps the most menacing to those of us who call this place home. Fearless buggers, they lurk outside the galley waiting for the exhausted worker headed home with dinner in hand. I have practically tripped over them numerous times, as they sit in the middle of the road, not the least bit intimidated by either humans or their machinery. Broad in wingspan, beady eyed, vocal, and unfortunately protected by the treaty, we are helpless against their frequent attacks.

Though adept at pulling wrappers from food waste dumpsters and picking every last morsel from the packaging from frozen meat products, they are apparently limited in their ability to fly out of tight spaces. Continuing shortages of the refrigerated shipping containers needed for transporting rotting food waste across the equator have left heaps and heaps of food waste, the chicken bones, the melon peels, the overcooked beef of seasons past, left in plastic-lined cardboard boxes in long rows. Though the boxes are banded closed, the determined skuas manage to find the leaky containers and the damaged boxes. Notorious fighters, the battles between skuas over these delectables often leads to the skuas falling into the spaces between the boxes. Their inability to fly straight up out of the space leaves wedged into the cracks, leaving them at the mercy of the workers that they terrorize daily. Starving and pathetic, they stay wedged in the tiny crevices until someone moves the boxes enough to allow the dazed birds to stumble out of their trap.