What is "the skua"?
Skuas, including what are called Jaegers in North America, are a cosmopolitan group of seven gull-like seabird species. They are largely pelagic, rarely seen from shore, and practice kelptoparasitism (stealing from other seabirds through harassment) to earn their meals. They're aggressive, solitary, and dark. While some might select a mascot or emblem for these reasons, my selection of the group as a digital icon is less symbolic of my own nature and more borne of a family story and my passion for birding.
My parents tell a story of once taking an overnight pelagic birding trip from Montauk, New York in the 1970s and how upon dawn's arrival over Hudson Canyon, through the fog of the morning, a lone gentleman from Brooklyn spotted a South Polar Skua and bellowed in his best accent, "Skua! Skua!" with his heavy accent making it sound more like "SSSKEWWWAH!" than "SCHOO-AH." When I went to pick out my first cell phone number back in the early 00s, I scrambled to find a 4 digit combination representing a word, and as I was really getting into birding at the time, I gravitated toward bird names. Thankfully the numbers representing COOT and LOON were taken, as those were the first that came to mind. SKUA was available and it's been my number ever since.
During my undergraduate years at The University of Minnesota - Duluth, I spent my share of time on the waterfront of Park Point in the fall, watching for migrating waterbirds and Jaegers. The latter were always a favorite, as their kleptoparasitic ways caused all of the gulls on the lake to get up and fly around in panic whenever a Jaeger was in the area. The juvenile forms of the three Jaeger species seen in the Great Lakes are difficult to separate and always presented a fun identification challenge. Perhaps fittingly, when I worked as a Waterbird Counter at Whitefish Point a couple years later, I tallied the highest total count of Jaegers for the location, with many people commenting on the remarkable frequency of the group that particular year.
I have owned an eponymous domain name in the past (tomauer.net), but thought it too pretentious at the time and abandoned it. After finishing my master's degree, I needed web space and bought theskua.com, after establishing myself as "the_skua" on Twitter. Skua.com was insanely expensive, so I appended a friend's comical saluation (he always called me "THEE Tom Auer") to "skua" and came up with "the skua."