Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE GOOSE-LIKE BIRDS

THE SWANS, GEESE, DUCKS, AND MERGANSERS

Eider-Ducks

Passing over the Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus), a strong-flying sea Duck of the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere, we come to the Eiders and Scoters, which are all strong-flying and diving sea Ducks.

Of these the Eider-Ducks are beyond question the most widely known and on the whole the most interesting. Some six or seven forms may properly be classed under this designation, these having been grouped under three genera, although by some regarded as belonging to but a single generic type. Of these the so-called true Eiders (Somateria) may be first considered. They are large and strikingly handsome birds with conspicuous and strongly marked colors, velvety black and snowy white, variegated with buff and delicate pale sea-green.

The males are mostly black below and white above, while the females and young have the plumage barred with dusky and pale fulvous or rusty. Of the five forms recognized the European Eider (S. mollissima) is perhaps the best known. The male has the bill dull grayish olive in life and the breast a deep vinaceous buff. It is a native of northern Europe.

A subspecies of this is the Greenland Eider (S. m. borealis), which differs in having the bill orange yellowish and the breast paler buff. It is found in eastern Arctic America, including Greenland, and coming south to northern Labrador in summer and to the northern border of the United States in winter.

The American Eider (5. dresseri), which is also found on the Atlantic coast of North America from Maine to Newfoundland and southern Labrador, has the naked angle on the side of the forehead in the male broad and rounded (this angle being narrow and pointed in the last two), and the black of the head bordered beneath with pale green for its entire length. Similar to this, but larger and distinguished by a V-shaped mark of black on the throat, is the Pacific Eider (S. v-nigra), which ranges over northwestern America from the Great Slave Lake westward, reaching also into eastern Asia. The King Eider (5. s-pectabilis), of the northern portions of the Northern Hemisphere, has the V-shaped mark of black on the throat as in the last, but may be known by the light bluish gray on the top of the head.

The Spectacled Eider (Arclonetta fischeri), although similar in general plumage to the other Eider-Ducks, differs markedly in the shape of the bill, this being shorter than the head and covered at base with a dense mat of soft velvety feathers, and further in the”cushion”of stiffened feathers which surround the eyes. It is a rather rare and little known species confined to the coast of Alaska from Norton Sound to Point Barrow. The last member of the group, although perhaps not a true Eider, is Steller's Duck (Polysticta stelleri), a bird of the high Arctic and sub-Arctic coasts of the Northern Hemisphere.

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