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Word of the Day - Friday, May 27th

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Eider (EYE-duhr)

·          Common clues: Duck down; Duck with soft down, Type of duck; Pillow stuffing

·          Crossword puzzle frequency: once a month

·          Frequency in English language: 37776 / 86800

Any of several large northern sea ducks having fine soft down that is commercially valuable.  The male has mainly black-and-white plumage.




The Common Eider is the largest duck in the northern hemisphere.  Weighing an average of 1800 grams, its weight can vary from 850 to 3025 grams.  Common eiders have one of the longest life spans among sea ducks, some living as long as 20 years.

Ducklings utter a number of sounds, ranging from a high-pitched note of contentment, which they give especially when they are feeding in the water, to a distress call – a monosyllabic piping.

Listen to a gathering of eider ducks at Northumberland harbour from the Wildsong web site.

Young Eiders often benefit from the care of “aunts,” which are non-breeding females.  These “aunts gather around nests containing hatching eggs or newly hatched young and accompany the ducklings to the water with their mother and help to protect the young from predators.

In winter when the temperature drops eiders protect themselves in other ways.  They minimize their energy expenditure by becoming inactive, not feeding and presumably to insulate themselves, gathering in groups so dense that individual ducks cannot be counted.

Common Eiders breed along much of the coast of northern North America, south to Maine in the east and south to the Alaska Peninsula in the west.  In winter the various races shift southward, even as far as Florida on the eastern seaboard and to the coast of Washington in the Pacific.  However, the bulk of the Atlantic coast eiders winter in Newfoundland and Labrador and on Cape Cod, Maine, and most of the Pacific eiders winter in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

Eiders feed during the day by diving to the bottom in waters from 3 to 20 meters deep to take mussels, clams, scallops, sea urchins, starfish, and crabs, which are swallowed whole and crushed in the large gizzard.

During spring migration, and when the eider ducks arrive near their breeding places, much time is spent feeding, and the birds accumulate fat.  These stores are particularly important for the breeding females, or hens, which rely on the reserves through the incubation period.  Unlike many ducks, the hen does not feed once she starts sitting on her eggs.