The King Eider 



or vermiculated with dusky. Length about 558.8 (22.00); wing 279.4 (n.oo); tail 

 101.6 (4.00); bill along culmen only 31.75 (1.25), but along gape 57.15 (2.25). 



Nesting. — Does not breed in California. Nest: Of down, on rough ground, 

 or among rocks, near the sea. Eggs: 4 to 6; dull water-green or greenish olive-gray. 

 Av. size 74.6 x 49.6 (2.94 x 1.95); index 66.3. Season: June. 



General Range. — Northern part of Northern Hemisphere. Breeds along the 

 Arctic coasts and islands of Siberia, Europe, and North America, and in Greenland. 

 Winters from southern Greenland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence south to Long Island 

 and, rarely, to Georgia; in the interior rarely to the Great Lakes; and on the North 

 Pacific along the Aleutian Islands and casually south to coast of California. 



Occurrence in California. — Casual, two records: "Black Point," San Fran- 

 cisco, winter of 1879-80 (Henshaw) ; the other from Suisun Marshes, winter 1902-3 

 (Loomis). 



Authorities. — Henshaw, Bull. Nutt. Orn. Club, vol. v., 1880, p. 189 (San 

 Francisco). 



EIDERS are among the hardiest of ducks in the far North; and they 

 are migratory only to the extent which the ice forces them out of 

 their summer haunts and drives them to the open seas. Their occurrence 

 anywhere south of Alaska is so rare as to be properly called accidental ; 

 and the two California records, spaced twenty-two years apart, do not 

 justify our making particular inquiry as to the species. 



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 necessary 

 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 com- 

 pleted and incubation begun, the eggs are quite buried in an abundance 

 of soft, slate-colored down. The Eiders of the Pacific do not colonize 

 as do 5. 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 exploi- 

 tation of Alaska by the white man is bringing such resources as these into 

 a regrettable prominence. 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. 



1829 



