The Eider’s tale

Citation

Thomas, M.J. (2011), "The Eider’s tale", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 29 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/mip.2011.02029aaa.005

The Eider’s tale

Article Type: The Eider’s tale From: Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Volume 29, Issue 1

A field at the edge of the sea. Covered with little, waving red flags! That was my induction to the Eider Duck (Plate 1). It was on a visit to Iceland in the 1960s. There the farmers cultivate eiderdown, and those flags were nest markers, where each nest was regularly visited by the farmer to collect small quantities of down, quickly replaced by the sitting Eider Duck. Each nest would yield about 17 g of the finest insulation per season.

The Eider Duck is the shorebird of Bute. My American friends would say nonsense because for them a shorebird is a wader like the Curlew or the Redshank. However, the Eider on Bute is indeed the bird of the shores of the Clyde, Rothsay Bay and the Kyles of Bute. Perhaps, the Eider should be the brand symbol of the island. It is in fact, the logo of the Argyll Bird Club. The Eider Duck is the bird that every visitor to Bute should see – it is the bird that I see every day of the year.

The male elder (Somateria mollissima, from the Greek name soma, meaning body and mollissima, Latin, meaning softest) is for much of the year unmistakeable. It is larger than a Mallard, heavily built, large wedge-shaped bill, white body, black belly, sides, rear, and thigh patch, black wing tips (primaries), with a beautiful green nape patch. The nape patch is an extraordinary green. The top of the male’s bill is also green. The breast is often suffused with pink. The female is brown, functionally coloured so that when sitting on the nest she is inconspicuous. She always nests close to the water, characteristically sitting so tight that you can often touch the bird, and is totally dedicated (the males takes no part in incubation), rarely leaving the nest during the later stages of incubation (25-28 days). The male may stand by, guarding the nest during the early stages of incubation, but soon loses interest and goes off to join an all male club offshore. Typical!

In adult plumage, the male Eider is difficult to overlook, but the male has a dramatic moult cycle. At the end of the breeding season, which is about the end of June, the males “disappear”, in that they lose all their white feathers and become superficially as inconspicuous as the females. The males tend to flock together, having left the females to get on with the housekeeping. The male moult continues until October; then and only then do the males become conspicuous again.

When the eggs hatch, many young broods gather in “creches”. Apparently, many females, having spent long periods incubating, go off to feed up again, leaving their offspring in the care of “aunties”. Crèches of up to a 100 young have been seen, although I have never counted more than 15.

During April and May, look out for courtship behaviour, which recurs in October and November. Bill tossing (head thrown back, bill held vertically) and neck stretching (head thrust forward, bill held down) may be observed. The Eider’s call note is also distinctive, cooing of a quality that comes over the noise of waves and listen for the ah-hooo sound. One of the bird’s local Scottish names is “coo-doos” (My wife calls it the Frankie Howard bird!).

Eiders feed chiefly on mussels, but also on gastropods and crustaceans.

The Bute Eider population is relatively sedentary, although in winter, birds come from the Argyll coast to over winter on the Clyde.

The Eider Duck is widely distributed around the Arctic Circle. Its numbers in Scotland are increasing. We are fortunate to have this beautiful bird in relative abundance along the eastern shore of Bute. Never take this bird for granted. Look again at the gorgeous plumage of the male.

Michael J. Thomas