The Great Skua (Stercorarius skua) is a heavyset, powerful seabird, 50–58 cm long with a wingspan of 125–140 cm and a weight of 1,100–1,650 g. Dark brown and compact, its silhouette can recall a young large gull or even a Common Buzzard. Diagnostic bold white patches at the base of the primaries are visible from a distance, both above and below the wing, and the short tail shows only slightly projecting central feathers — the broad, powerful body and heavy flight action separate it from the smaller skuas.
Mostly silent away from the breeding grounds, the Great Skua gives harsh, barking and cackling calls at the colony, but in Sweden it is almost always encountered silent. It does not breed in Sweden, nesting instead on Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland and in northern Norway, and is seen here only as a passage migrant, chiefly along the west coast, most numerous during the autumn passage from August to November, especially with strong westerly winds and storms that push seabirds toward the coast; good watch points are the outer headlands and lighthouses of the Bohuslän coast. A powerful, versatile hunter, it steals food from gulls and gannets by chasing them in the air until they drop their catch, a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism, but it also kills seabirds and their chicks outright and takes fish, fishing discards and carrion — predator, scavenger and pirate in one, spending most of the year out on the open sea.
Read about this species in Swedish →