Assessing the diet of great skuas, Catharacta skua, using five different techniques

Several different techniques have been used to study the diet composition of skuas and gulls in polar regions. In this study, we assessed the diet of great skuas using five techniques (pellets, prey remains, spontaneous regurgitates, observed feeds and water off-loading). The estimates of diet derived from each sampling technique during a single breeding season were generally similar. Although it is easy to collect large samples of pellets and...