The Skuary and the Lonely Skua

This past Sunday, I took a trip out to Cape Evans, about 15 miles northwest of McMurdo Station, but still on Ross Island.  Cape Evans was the headquarters for Robert Falcon Scott's 2nd expedition to Antarctica from 1910-1913.  The hut at Cape Evans is named "Scott Hut," and I'll post some of my photos of it soon!

When Scott first discovered this cape in 1902 he named it "The Skuary."  As I witnessed, it was probably because there was a sizable skua population there!  See all the skua in the center of the picture, in the pond's open water:

The Skuary

After discovering The Skuary in 1902, Scott pushed on south as far as open water would take his ship, the Discovery.  Though he intended to mainly live out of Discovery over the winter, Scott erected a hut on a point close by to the bay where Discovery spent her first winter in Antarctica.  The bay was thus christened "Winter Quarters Bay," the hut "Discovery Hut," and the point "Hut Point."

I spotted a lone skua while I was hiking out to Hut Point a few days ago:

The Lonely Skua

It may be difficult to spot the skua birds in these photos as they are on this page, so you may need to click on the photo to see in higher resolution.  Note, I also don't post the full resolution version of these photos because they'd be too large to upload and keep on the site.

These photos don't provide much in the way of perspective of the surroundings, but I thought they were neat photos of skuas.  Enjoy!

Brett

2010-11-30 3:02pm (NZDT)