AMERICAN EIDER. 
COMMON EIDER. SEA DUCK. 
SOMATERIA DRF.SSERI. 
Char. Back, cheeks, and wing-coverts white ; top of head, wings, tail, 
and belly black; patch of sea-green on sides of neck; breast rosy buff; 
bill of greenish color, and with long wedges of feathers extending from 
the forehead and cheeks towards the nostrils ; legs dull green. The female 
is nearly uniform dull brown, mottled with paler on the breast ; belly dull 
white. Length about 25 inches. 
Nest. Generally on a flat and grassy ocean island, often on a bluff on 
the coast, — sometimes on a heath-covered moorland; a substantial 
structure of coarse marine herbage thickly lined with down. 
Eggs. 4-10; color varies from creamy gray to grayish green ; 2.95 X 
2.00. 
The Eider Duck, remarkable for the softness of its valuable 
down, seems thus purposely provided by Nature with a clothing 
suited to the inclement regions in which it generally dwells. 
Living mostly out at sea, it is thus enabled to endure the sever- 
