810 THE PACIFIC EIDER. 
the auricular region, and the upper border of the cheeks deeply stained with 
yellowish green; throat with a large V-shaped mark of velvety black, Bill orange- 
red, paler terminaHy (light reddish in the dried skin) then nail yellowish white; 
iris dark brown; feet yellow. Adult female: Light fulvous, barred with black, 
the bars widest on the scapulars; head and neck finely streaked with black, the 
throat nearly immaculate; abdomen usually plain grayish brown; greater wing- 
coverts, primary coverts, remiges, and rectrices plain grayish dusky, the greater 
coverts and secondaries distinctly tipped with white. Young: Similar to the adult 
female, but upper parts dusky, the feathers bordered with rusty fulvous, the 
greater coverts and secondaries not tipped with white” (B. B. & R.). Length of 
adult about 24.00 (609.6) ; wing 11.50-12.75 (292.1-323.9) ; bill along culmen 1.80- 
2.26 (45.7-57.4), to point of basal angle 2.50-3.10 (63.5-78.7) ; tarsus 2.00-2.30 
(50.8-58.4). Female smaller. 
Recognition Marks.—Gull size; black of crown and underparts and white 
of remaining plumage (male) unmistakable; mottled brown plumage of female 
with size distinctive. 
Nesting.—Does not breed in Washington. Nest: on the ground, of grass, 
moss, ete., copiously lined with down. Eggs: 6-10, light olive-drab. Av. size, 
3.00 x 2.00 (76.2 x 50.8). Season: June; one brood. 
General Range.—Both coasts of the North Pacific and Bering Sea, the 
western Arctic coast of Alaska and eastern Arctic coast of Siberia; east to Great 
Slave Lake; chiefly resident, but south irregularly in winter to Washington. 
Range in Washington.—Casual in winter on Puget Sound, and the West 
Coast(?). 
Authorities.—Bowles, Auk, Vol. XXIII. Apr. 1906, p. 140. 
EIDERS are among the hardiest of ducks in the far North, and they are 
migratory only to the extent in which the ice forces them out of their summer 
haunts and drives them to the open seas. Their occurrence so far south as 
Puget Sound is rare, almost accidental, and there is no British Columbia record. 
Our chief interest in the Eider Duck attaches to its use of down in lining 
its nests. Since it breeds under Arctic conditions, it is necéssary that the eggs 
be not exposed to the cold air during the absence of the parent. Each day, 
therefore, as an egg is laid, in a grass lined depression on some moss-grown 
slope or small knoll well back from the sea-shore, the bird plucks feathers from 
her breast; and when the set of six is completed and incubation begun, the eggs 
are quite buried in an abundance of soft, slate-colored down. Pacific Eiders 
do not colonize as do S. mollissima, and others of the North Atlantic waters. 
The gathering of the down has not, therefore, come to have much commercial 
importance and may never reach the dimensions of a traffic. The Aleuts and 
Eskimos are not ignorant of its uses, however, and the exploitation of Alaska 
by the white man is bringing such resources as these into a regrettable promin- 
ence. It is all very well for the natives to subsist, as they have for centuries, 
upon the eggs of birds, and to clothe themselves with their skins, but the wild 
life of Alaska cannot long bear up under the strain imposed upon it by an army 
of gold-seekers. 
