British Birds. 
150 
STELLER’S 
EIDER-DUCK. 
(Heniconetta 
stelleri.) 
King Eider-Duck. 
Steller’s Eider-Duck. 
This beau- 
tiful Duck has 
twice been 
shot on the 
east coast of 
England ; once in Norfolk and 
once in Yorkshire. It is a 
maritime species, and breeds in 
the arctic regions from the north 
of Norway throughout Siberia 
to the Aleutian Islands. The 
male is a very handsome bird, 
with a white head, and a green 
patch on the lores and another 
on the nape. The wing-speculum 
is purple, and the chest and breast 
are chestnut, fading into cinnamon 
on the abdomen. The female is 
very different from the male, being blackish above and below, with the head and 
neck rufous brown and the chest chestnut, mottled with black. The wing-speculum 
is purple as in the male, and the fact that the hen possesses the same speculum as 
the male is one of the points in which Steller’s Duck differs from the other 
Eiders. It is a shy bird and soon deserts its nest if the latter be meddled with. 
The nest is a depression in the moss of the tundra, which is lined with down. The 
eggs are from seven to nine in number, and are of a pale greenish stone-colour ; 
they measure about two-and-a-quarter inches in length. 
The Eiders have a bare space between the lores and the 
forehead, and, when adult, have sickle-shaped inner secondaries 
on each side of the back. The Common Eider is white, with a 
black head and belly, a beautiful tint of delicate pink on the 
chest and a patch of green behind the ear-coverts. The female 
is brown, mottled with black and rufous, and the young males are also at first brown 
like the females, and take nearly four years to gain the adult plumage. After the 
breeding-season the males moult their quills and don a dull dress like that of the 
hens, and as they are then unable to fly, they betake themselves to the open sea and 
associate in flocks. The species breeds along the shores of Scotland north from the 
Fame Islands in Northumberland, but is only a winter visitor to Ireland and the 
coasts of England. It nests in various places on the coasts of Norway, Denmark, 
the Faeroes, Iceland, and the shores of Greenland and North-eastern America, being 
protected in most places for the sake of the down, which is collected by the people 
who farm the breeding-places. It is a maritime species and is gregarious both in 
THE COMMON 
EIDER-DUCK. 
(Somateria 
mollissima.) 
