We went by the Reversing Falls in Blue Hill today and noticed that our annual “paddling” of Common Eiders was forming far offshore in Blue Hill Bay. There were about 70 of these ducks have flown in so far – fewer than usual for early November.
These are our largest native ducks. By December, hundreds of them usually have arrived to over-winter as a group in the Bay.
Each year, the Annual Blue Hill Eider Convention seems to attract fewer vacationers. Part of the reason is that this duck’s favorite food, the Blue Mussel, has been significantly diminished along our coast. Actually, these ducks are part of their own problem – each can gobble down (whole) more mussels than you get for dinner at a generous restaurant.
When humans get close to these ducks while they’re feeding, they paddle away in a collective frenzy, which may be a defensive move designed to obscure individual targets and appear to be a single, large body.
We haven’t yet been able to get close enough to the Eiders to take good photographs this year. So, we’ll show a couple of images from prior years. The males are white and black and the females are bronze.
(Brooklin, Maine)