The Ducks. 
15 1 
THE 
KING EIDER. 
(Somateria 
spectabilis.) 
summer and winter. 
The nest is made of 
grass, sea-weed, and 
water-plants, and is 
lined with down. The 
eggs are from five to eight in 
number, of a greenish stone- 
grey colour, and measure from 
three to three-and-a-quarter 
inches in length. 
The King 
Eider is easily 
d i stinguished 
from the Com- 
mon Eider by 
the shape of the feathering on 
the forehead, which reaches 
forward as far as the hinder end of the nostrils. This will serve to distinguish 
the female birds, which otherwise resemble each other closely, except that the hen 
of the King Eider is more rufous than that of the Common Eider. The male has 
a V-shaped black mark on the throat, and has a cube of reddish orange on each 
side of the base of the upper mandible. The head and nape are ot a delicate lavender 
grey, with the hind neck and mantle pure white. It breeds in Arctic America, 
Greenland and Northern Europe and Asia as far as Bering Sea, and occasionally 
visits Great Britain in winter, a few individuals having been observed at intervals 
off our coasts. Like the Common Eider, it is entirely a maritime Duck. The 
nest is a depression in the ground, lined with the bird’s own down, and the eggs are 
of a greenish-stone colour or clay-brown, measuring two-and-a-half to two-and- 
three- quarter inches in length. 
The Common Eider-Duck. 
