DUCKS 



147 



birds, and both the birds and the inhabitraits 

 prosper in the partnership. 



We do it differently in Anieriea. The coast 

 of Labrador formerly was a great breeding 

 ground of the Eider Duck. Before the year 1750, 

 vessels were fitted out in New England for the 

 Labrador coast for the express purpose of col- 

 lecting feathers and eider-down. The crews 

 landed on the coasts and islands when the young 

 birds were still unfledged and while the parents 

 were molting their flight quills and unable to fly. 

 They surrounded the birds, drove them together 

 and killed them with clubs, thus destroying "mil- 

 hons " for their feathers alone, as there was no 

 market for their flesh. This was continued until 

 not long after 1760, when the birds had become so 

 reduced in numbers that feather hunting became 

 unprofitable and was given up. In the meantime, 

 and ever since, eggers, fishermen, and settlers 

 liave destroyed both birds and eggs, imtil the 

 vast Eider nurseries of the Labrador coast are 

 little more than a memory, and now we import 

 eider-down gathered by the wiser and more 

 humane people of the Old World. 



However, the Eider is by no means extinct 

 in this country. It still breeds in the more inac- 

 cessible regions of northern Ungava and about 

 Hudson Bay and a few are preserved in Maine 

 under the protecting care of the National Asso- 

 ciation of Audubon Societies. The nests are 

 hidden away carefully under thick shrubbery on 

 rocky islands where the waves of the Atlantic 

 break ceaselessly on jagged rocks and the birds 

 when not on their nests keep at sea. 



The only note I have ever heard from one of 

 these birds was a hoarse croak when the female 

 was suddenly startled from her nest, but the male 

 is said to have a soft note in the breeding season. 



In migration they seem to be rather silent 

 birds, flying in long undulating lines and alter- 

 nately flapping and sailing. The Massachuselts 

 gimtiers call them Sea Ducks for they seem to 

 prefer the outer ledges jutting into the sea. 



Numbers frequent the islands south of Cape Cod 

 in winter where they feed largely on mussels 

 for which they dive sometimes in at least ten 

 fathoms of water. They are hardy and hand- 

 some. Their flesh is fishv and imattractive. If 



Photo by T. G. Pearson 



NEST OF EIDER 

 At Way Ledge, near Isle au Haut, Maine 



protected on their breeding grounds they might 

 become in time a great source of revenue to the 

 people of the northern coasts. 



Edwaki) Howe Forbush. 



KING EIDER 

 Somateria spectabilis ( Liuiuni.':) 



.\. O U. .Xiimber 1 02 ^^ee Color I'latc 19 



General Description. — Leii.!;tli, 22 inclies. Males are 

 wliite above and lirownish-black below : females are 

 liffbt brown, streaked and barred witb darker. Males 

 liave the bill with immense square frontal processes 



of females are less 

 developed but retain the same general outlines. 



Color. — .Adult M.\lf. : Fore parts, most of wing- 

 coverts, and a spot on each side of rump, white, tinged 



