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Pomarine Skuas are medium-sized seabirds. Both sexes look alike, but they can both come in different morphologies, pale, intermediate and dark. In addition, they have slightly different breeding and eclipse plumages. During the breeding season dark morphology Pomarine Skuas have an all dark-brown front, a near-black very-dark brown cap, wings and tail, and a yellowish-brown nape of the neck. In eclipse they show some lighter-grey barring on the front, mostly on the throat, belly and vent. Pale morphology Pomarine Skuas, in breeding and eclipse plumage, have a light-grey neck and front, down to the undertail coverts, with a mid-greyish chest band. Their cap is very dark grey, while the back is mid-grey, with dark-grey wings and tail feathers. Outside the breeding season they show some grey barring on the sides of the neck, flanks, vent and a clearly visible barred chest band. The intermediate morphology sits in between these two, with more brown to rufous hues in their plumage. All morphologies have silvery-white wing "flashes" (thin longitudinal edges on the primaries) which become less conspicuous in eclipse. At any time of the year, the tail streamers can be either present or missing. The irises of all Pomarine Skuas are dark. The slender, slightly hooked bill is black. Also the legs and webbed feet are black. Juveniles are greyish, with birds of the dark morphology a bit darker than those of pale morphology. The front is heavily barred, while the neck is streaked and the wings are vermiculated grey with lighter-grey edges. The head still lacks the characteristic dark cap.

Apart from size (which is difficult to judge in the field), the main difference between Pomarine Skuas and Arctic Skuas is that the former have more spatula-shaped tail streamers than the latter and fainter, if any, wing flashes.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Pomarine Jaeger is available HERE .

Pomarine Jaegers are a strongly migratory pelagic species. Their breeding grounds are located in the Arctic, mostly along the Arctic coastal fringe of Eurasia, Alaska and parts of Canada, and on many Arctic islands. They spend the northern winters mostly above tropical oceans, such as the eastern Atlantic, off West Africa, parts of the Caribbean, in the eastern Pacific, off northern South America, in the Gulf of Bengal and in to the Gulf of Arabia. Their only wintering grounds outside the tropics are located off the East to South-east coast of Australia and just to the North of the North Island of New Zealand.

In Europe, Pomarine Skuas breed on Arctic tundra in North-west Russia, including much of Yuzhny and Severny islands. Outside the breeding season they disperse and are found mostly above the North Sea between England/Scotland and Norway and the eastern Atlantic Ocean along the western coastline of Ireland to Portugal. They do not normally enter the Bay of Biscay.

J. Pires reports spotting a Pomarine Skua off Sagres, Algarve, Portugal, in October 2024. All sighting and photographic information presented on this page has kindly been contributed by J. Pires.

Pomarine Skuas (Jaegers) were previously seen by us in Australia.