The great skua in action – Cool pictures

The sky was a bit grey today but fortunately it didn’t rain a lot. The humpback whale from yesterday had already left the bay when we went out this morning but the minke whales and the white beaked dolphins haven’t gone anywhere and we had great success with them on all our tours.

In the last days and weeks we have noticed that the number of Great Skuas in the bay is unusally high, I can’t remember seeing so many of them. The Great Skua is known to attack other sea birds to rob them of their catches but they are also known to directly attack and kill other seabirds.

It’s quite common to see the Great Skua robbing other sea birds of their catch but it not so often that we see them directly kill another sea bird. So, here are some rare photos of both, taken by Christian.

Þórdís, guide.

The Great Skua attacking a Black-backed Gull

The Great Skua after successfully attacking a Kittiwake