LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 109 



When the king eiders arrive, the inland ponds are already open, and to these 

 fresh-water pools the king eiders go at once. They do frequent the open 

 sea somewhat, but their favorite haunts through the mating and nesting 

 season are the inland lakelets. 



Courtship. — Mr. "VV. Sprague Brooks (1915) describes the court- 

 ship of this species as follows : 



Once I found this species courting. On June 14, when approaching a small 

 lagoon, but still unable to see it owing to a slight elevation of the tundra 

 before me, I heard a strange sound on the other side of the elevation. This 

 peculiar noise came in series of three " TJrrr-urrr-TJRRR'' the last being the 

 loudest, a sort of drumming call as when one expels air forcibly through the 

 mouth with the tongue lightly pressed against the palate. I had heard this 

 noise once before during the winter made by an Eskimo and used with indiffer- 

 ent results for encouraging his dog team. I thought this call was an inA^en- 

 tion of his own at the time, but when in sight of the lagoon I found 

 that the disturbance came from a small flock of king eiders, three fe- 

 males and five males. They were on the beach, and three males were 

 squatted in a triangle about a female, each about a yard from her. They did 

 much neck stretching, as many male ducks do in the spring, and frequently 

 bowed the head forward. The males constantly uttered the above drumming 

 note. During this time the female was very indifferent to the attentions of 

 her suitor.s, doing nothing more than occasionally extending her head toward 

 one of them. After a brief period of these tactics, one or more of the males 

 would enter the water and bathe vigorously, with much bowing of heads and 

 stretching of necks, to return to the beach in a few moments and repeat the 

 foregoing performance. Finally they all took wing, uttering the croaking 

 sound similar to the Pacific eider. 



Nesting. — ^Although the eggs of the king eider are not rare in 

 collections, I am surprised to find that remarkably little has been 

 published regarding the details of its nesting habits. I have three 

 sets in my collection from Point Barrow, Alaska, but unfortunately 

 no particulars came with them. MacFarlane secured over 200 eggs 

 from Franklin Bay and Liverpool Ba3% and says in a letter that 

 when on Island Point, as he was walking along the sea beach, a 

 female of this species got up and flcAv violently away to a short 

 distance, where she alighted on the ground. He at once discovered 

 her nest, which was a mere hole or depression in the ground, about 

 no yards from the beach, wholly composed of eider down, and con- 

 taining G eggs. Other nests were found on the coast during several 

 seasons, and also among the islands of the Arctic Sea. All appear 

 to have been similar to the one described, and G is the largest number 

 of eggs mentioned as having been found in any one nest. 



Messrs. Thayer and Bangs (1914) report that: 



On June 26 a nest was found (by John Koren) in a tuft of grass 10 feet from 

 the edge of a small lake on one of the islands in the delta of the Kolyma 

 (northeastern Siberia). It contained the broken shells of two fresh eggs, evi- 

 dently destroyed by a pair of glaucous gulls that were nesting nearby. The 

 pair of eiders were swimming about in the lake. 



