Jump To

Search

Animal Oddities Wild Turkeys, Springtime Lovers American Crow American Mink American Robin Animal Tracking Atlantic Sea Scallop Autumn Bald Eagle Beautiful Buttonbush Beaver Belted Kingfisher Binoculars Black Bear Black-capped Chickadee Blue Jay Bobcat Brook Trout Browntail Moth Bufflehead Canada Goose Cattails Chipmunk Chipping Sparrow Common Eider Common Snapping Turtle Common Winterberry Cooper’s Hawk Coyote Eastern Bluebird Eastern Gray Squirrel Eastern Larch Evolution in the 21st Century Fiddle Time Fisher Flying Squirrel For the Birds Fox Garter Snake Gray Catbird Great Blue Heron Groundhog Harvest Time Herring Gull Honey bees Horseshoe Crab Hummingbird Moth Indigo Bunting Insects at Risk Jellies Just Itching Lights of the North Little Brown Bat Little Red Rocket Lobster Long-tailed Duck Meadow Vole Mermaid of Harpswell Minke Whale and Friends Moving Month Muskrat Nest Boxes for Birds Northern Cardinal Northern Leopard Frog Ocean Sunfish Osprey Oysters on the Rebound Pelagic Pileated Woodpecker Piping Plover Pollinators Porcupine Raccoon Riding Out the Winter River Otters Rockweed Roseate Tern Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Ruffed Grouse Sandhill Crane Settled Down for a Long Winter’s Nap Sharp-Shinned Hawk Skunk Snowy Owl Soft-shell Clams Spotted Salamander Spring Peepers Spying in the Dark The Apple Tree The Duck that Loved me The Eastern or Taiga Moose The Sugar Maple Toads Tracking a Harpswell Heron Tree Swallow Tufted Titmouse Vernal Pools Virginia Opossum Water Lilies Weasel Confusion Weasels Whales, a Story of Change White-Tailed Deer, part one White-Tailed Deer, part two Wild Turkey Wildlife Encounters Wildlife Mysteries Wildlife Problems Winter Moth Red-winged Blackbird The Lone Star Tick
Nature Notes: Common Eider

Nature Notes: Common Eider

Ed Robinson
December 28, 2012
Nature Notes

Now that winter is here, welcome back one of Harpswell’s more spectacular birds. The largest duck in Maine is known as the “common eider” (somateria mollisima) to distinguish it from the more unusual king and spectacled eiders, but there is nothing common about these beauties. A full grown adult can reach 28″ long, with a… Read more