🐾 What Animal Lives Where

Where does the Great Skua live?

Stercorarius skua has 182,631 records in 91 countries and territories, from 1831 to 2026. Most records come from United Kingdom.

Great Skua
Great Skua — Photo: Ómar Runólfsson · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
AnimaliaChordataAvesCharadriiformesStercorariidaeStercorarius

When it is recorded

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Peak month: September. Records cluster in the months an animal is present and being looked for, so a summer peak can reflect observer effort as much as the animal.

Records over time

18312026

Recording effort has risen steeply almost everywhere since the 1990s, so a rising line usually shows more observers rather than more animals.

Where it is recorded

PlaceRecordsShare
United Kingdom 57,468
Norway 17,339
Spain 16,742
Sweden 16,503
Denmark 14,261
Portugal 12,576
France 9,505
Iceland 8,802
Netherlands 5,528
Svalbard and Jan Mayen 4,691
Ireland 4,280
Belgium 4,129
Faroe Islands 1,781
United States 1,466
Canada 1,161
Germany 717
Isle of Man 660
Morocco 429
Heard & McDonald Islands 232
Russia 214
Cabo Verde 197
Poland 192
Italy 161
Finland 158
Western Sahara 142
Greece 128
Guernsey 127
Greenland 106
Ukraine 106
Switzerland 89
Austria 67
Czechia 66
Antarctica 65
ZZ 62
Hungary 55
Gibraltar 52
South Africa 52
Romania 50
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 49
Argentina 47

Showing the top 40 of 91 places.

Related animals

Others in the family Stercorariidae.

Parasitic Jaeger
Parasitic Jaeger
537,413 records
Pomarine Jaeger
Pomarine Jaeger
208,608 records
Long-tailed Jaeger
Long-tailed Jaeger
154,487 records
Brown Skua
Brown Skua
44,564 records
South Polar Skua
South Polar Skua
42,965 records
Status from the records: resident
Recorded across many years and months — an established presence. This is inferred from how many years and months the animal appears in, not from a range map — treat it as evidence, not a formal assessment.