Skip to content
The UK Bird Atlas

South Polar Skua (Stercorarius maccormicki)Where and when to see it in the UK

Vagrant · reporting peaks August · Jaegers and Skuas · BOU category A

Records to 2026-08-16 · build 2026-08-31

South Polar Skua (Stercorarius maccormicki)
Francisco Ardini/PNRA, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Too few records to rate squares by month. Each marked square has at least one record; the table below gives the count and years.

South Polar Skua: relative reporting rate by 10 km square, September

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (grid squares, place names from OS Open Names). Northern Ireland place names: OSNI Open Data, OGL v3.0. County and country boundaries: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Coastline: Natural Earth. Bird records from the data partners listed here.

South Polar Skua has been recorded in 4 of the 2,971 10 km squares covering UK land (0%) in records to 2026. Vagrant in the UK. Reporting peaks in August.

Conservation status: Least Concern (IUCN Red List, LC)
View on the IUCN Red List

Records by 10 km square

SquareWhereRecordsYearsVerified
SV80Sea, off Isles of Scilly122001 to 2024unverified
SV90Isles of Scilly, England112023 to 2024unverified
SW32Cornwall, England22024unverified
SW54Cornwall, England22023unverified

Spotted an error in a square? Report it and it goes into the review queue. Read the methodology for how classes, flags and sensitive-species rules work. Data to 2026.