Brown/Sub-antarctic Skua Stercorarius antarcticus are widely distributed at cool-temperate and sub-Antarctic islands in the Southern Ocean, where their diet includes burrowing petrels caught at night and eggs stolen from incubating birds, especially penguins, during the day (Furness 1987, Higgins &a...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2009
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.690.2045 http://marineornithology.org/PDF/38_1/38_1_59-60.pdf |
| Summary: | Brown/Sub-antarctic Skua Stercorarius antarcticus are widely distributed at cool-temperate and sub-Antarctic islands in the Southern Ocean, where their diet includes burrowing petrels caught at night and eggs stolen from incubating birds, especially penguins, during the day (Furness 1987, Higgins & Davies 1996, Shirihai 2007). At Marion Island, Prince Edward Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, Brown Skua prey on eggs of crested penguins Eudyptes sp. during summer months which they remove in their bills from the colonies by flying to nearby middens where the eggs’ contents are consumed (Sinclair 1980, Brooke 1985). Breeding skuas at Marion Island often take penguin eggs to the vicinity of their nests, which, as a consequence, can be surrounded by large numbers of emptied egg shells (pers. obs.). We report on a pair of Brown Skua which unusually were found incubating a foreign egg at Marion Island. The nest was situated close to the Kildalkey Hut stream, on the edge of a Southern Giant Petrel Macronectes giganteus colony and about 200 m inland from the coast where both Macaroni E. chrysolophus and Southern Rockhopper E. chrysocome Penguins were breeding. When first found on 30 November 2008 the nest contained three eggs under the incubating bird. Two of the eggs were normally-marked and |
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