BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Songkhran" data-source="post: 1268966" data-attributes="member: 96691">Since i think they are such awesome birds, Ive decided to start a thread wholly dedicated to Skuas. If anyone wants to discuss ID, behaviour, population or post photographs (mystery our otherwise) would be good to do it here.I'm based at Sheringham and have been watching the sea daily so thought i would kick off with some of my observations and theories on behaviour i have noted over the past few months. The majority of the questions i want to raise are based on speculation and may not have definite answers. So far there appear to have been three distinct fazes in which Arctic Skuas have moved through this autumn. The first faze appears to have been from late June to early August which presumably has involved non breeding adults included 1st and second sum birds. following this (especially during one onshore blow) the first juvs started moving and recently i have noticed very clean full adult birds many of them with particularly long tail projections - these i'm guessing are successful breeding adults.Having noticed these birds only very recently its interesting to speculate whether the length of the tail streamers could be closely related to the health and breeding success of the birds. I remember some recent research into Swallows which said that the length of the tail was as a direct result of the number of parasites the birds were carrying and the longer the streamer the more healthy and reproductive the bird will be, i wonder whether this could also be the case for Skuas. so far the majority of the Arctic Skua i have seen have been dark phase, of the 322 Arctics i have seen so far this year, probably only 1/5 have been pale phase, i don't believe there has been a single day were i have seen more pale phase, intermediate full ads have been the scarcest morph, does anyone have any info on were this phases herald from, are all pale phase birds from Scottish populations</blockquote>

Verification