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The great skua was described from the Faroe Islands and Iceland by the Danish zoologist Morten Thrane Brünnich in 1764 under the binomial name Catharacta skua. [2] [3] It is now placed in the genus Stercorarius that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760.
The three smaller skuas, the Arctic skua, the long-tailed skua, and the pomarine skua, are called jaegers in North American English. The English word "skua" comes from the Faroese name for the great skua, skúgvur [ˈskɪkvʊɹ], with the island of Skúvoy renowned for its colony of that bird.
The parasitic jaeger (North America) or Arctic skua (Europe) (Stercorarius parasiticus), is a seabird in the skua family Stercorariidae. It is a migratory species that breeds in Northern Scandinavia , Scotland , Iceland , Greenland , Northern Canada , Alaska , and Siberia and winters across the southern hemisphere.
The south polar skua (Stercorarius maccormicki) is a large seabird in the skua family, Stercorariidae. An older name for the bird is MacCormick's skua, after explorer and naval surgeon Robert McCormick, who first collected the type specimen. This species and the other large skuas, such as the great skua, are sometimes placed in a separate genus ...
Asturianu; Azərbaycanca; Беларуская; Български; Català; Cebuano; Čeština; Corsu; Cymraeg; Eesti; Ελληνικά; Español; Esperanto; Euskara ...
Brown skua eyeing a king penguin carcass. This is the heaviest species of skua and rivals the largest gulls, the great black-backed gull and glaucous gull, as the heaviest species in the shorebird order although not as large in length or wingspan. [2]
The most likely explanation is extensive hybridization between the great and one species of lesser skuas, which resulted in a hybrid population that eventually evolved into a distinct species, the pomarine jaeger; or alternatively between the pomarine and a species of Southern Hemisphere skua, with the great skua being the hybrid offspring ...
There are also ducks, geese, waders, gulls and other sea birds, the Arctic skua and the great skua, with the Icelandic population of the latter representing almost half of the total world population. There are few passerines (perching birds), perhaps because of a lack of nesting opportunities or a dearth of insect food at some times of year.