for a longer or shorter time they visit again, then again separate, and so they continue to act, at longer or shorter intervals, till one or other of them flies off to sea.
This system of making each other little visits and then going away and remaining for some time apart, seems a feature of the gull tribe generally, and it is particularly marked in the case of the great skua. A pair of these birds will each have its apartments, so to speak, and, by turns, each will be the caller on or the receiver of a call from the other. Either, one will walk or fly directly over to where the other is standing or reclining, or it will make several circling sweeps before coming down beside it, or else—for this is another fashion—each of them will set out to call on the other, and meeting in the centre between their respective places, have their gossip there.
However the meeting takes place, when the birds are together one of them will commonly bow its head down towards the ground in a heavy sort of manner, whilst the other stands facing it with the head and bill lifted into the air. All at once one of the birds—usually, I think, the caller, if either has remained at home—turns round, raises its wings above its back, and holding them thus, makes a heavy sort of spring or running leap forward along the ground. This it does several times, lowering the wings each time that it pauses, and raising them again to make the leap. From this it might be thought that the bird flew rather than leapt, but this, when I saw it, did not appear to me to be the case. It did not fly, but only jumped with the wings held up. The birds
