Auk 
Jan. 
16 Norton, Perfected Plumage of the King Eider. 
ON THE PERFECTED PLUMAGE OF THE KING 
EIDER (SOMATERIA SPECTABILIS). 
BY ARTHUR H. NORTON. 
In a private letter written to me by Mr. Fred Rackliff from 
Big Green Island, Knox Co., Me., under date of December 30, 
1898, I have this record: ‘‘ There are three of the finest King 
Eiders staying off the east side of the island that you ever saw,— 
two Drakes and a Duck; they have been here over a month; shall 
get a shot at them before long.” 
As a proof of Mr. Rackliff’s statement, the Drakes are now 
before me, and both are indeed fine specimens; but one, a superb 
Drake, is deserving of more than a passing notice, as it shows a 
pterylographic adornment, or modification of the outer tertials, 
not mentioned in the manuals most commonly employed by 
American students. ‘Two of the outer tertials have their shafts 
distally depressed, slightly expanded, and curved downward (not 
laterally as in falcate secondaries); vane outlines asymmetrical 
by great production of many barbs of the outer web; the barbs 
of the inner feather have a length of 50 mm.; the vane having 
tapered suddenly from the base of the feather to this width, 
becomes suddenly constricted and tapers to the end of the feather 
which terminates with the naked shaft; the posterior outline of 
the vane is crescentic, owing to the backward direction of the 
barbs forming the point of the vane. 
The produced parts of the vanes fold, the superior or inner of 
which is the longer, enclosing the inferior or outer, and both 
curve slightly upward from the plane of the back at a little less 
than an angle of 45°, having the effect of a pair of pyramids 
rising from the posterior border of the scapulars. 
Nearly all of the so-called adult Drakes of this species which I 
have examined, show, though in a far less degree, a production of 
a part of the outer web of corresponding tertials, suggesting 
that this adornment is common in the highest phase of maturity, 
