A few seconds later it was clear what was happening. The ‘aggressive’ bird was the male and indeed, he was displaying to the female. The female in turn was showing she was receptive and quickly the male climbed on top of her. As I was still in the best position (although my zodiac was now stuck on a rock), I continued clicking away to capture the whole seen. This didn’t last long and after a few seconds they were sitting next to each other again. But now I did have a nice series of courtship and mating behaviour of Brown Skuas. Not the picture of the lonely skua in a white world that I intended to make, but a much nicer serie…