Track and Watch ³

This species is one of the 'track and watch' species in the Yukon as it is rare, threatened or both. If you see this species please take a photo (if you can), note where you are and either upload it to iNaturalist or send it straight to the Conservation Data Centre (CDC) by downloading a Field Observation Form for animals or by using your own method or reporting, and sending it to us: yukoncdc@gov.yk.ca

Summary ⁴

A large duck (50-70cm/20-28in), with males being larger. Females are brown to blend in with their surroundings to hide from predators, whilst males are black and white with a distinctive yellow knob on the beak. Habitat is seacoasts and large river valleys, vicinity of ponds and pools in open tundra, offshore along rocky coasts (winter) (AOU 1983). Nests on ground away from but not distant from water in open tundra (Palmer 1976); often in graminoid meadows within a few miles of the coast.

"cool facts" ⁵

A large duck of Arctic coastal waters, the King Eider is one of North America's most spectacular waterfowl species. Highly gregarious for most of the year, it forms prodigious flocks during spring migration, sometimes exceeding 10,000 individuals. The King Eider forages on sea beds up to 25 meters (82 ft) deep. The female King Eider alone attends the nest. When an intruder is present, the female sits low on the nest with her head flattened on the ground. She sits tightly on the eggs and sometimes can be touched or picked up off of the nest. The female King Eider does not feed very often during the 22-24 day incubation period. One female did not leave her nest for seven days before being flushed by an arctic fox.

Threats ⁶

The species is threatened by chronic coastal oil pollution (Nikolaeva et al. 2006) and future oil spills (del Hoyo et al. 1992, Kear 2005, Nikolaeva et al. 2006), especially where it forms large aggregations on the sea during the moult period, on migration or in the winter (del Hoyo et al. 1992). The species is also threatened by the degradation of food resources as a result of oil exploration and by human disturbance when moulting and on migration, and is threatened by disturbance from uncontrolled shipping (e.g. oil transportation) on its wintering grounds (Nikolaeva et al. 2006). The population wintering in Greenland is under serious threats from over-exploitation (del Hoyo et al. 1992, Merkel 2004, Kear 2005) (10-20 % of the winter population is killed annually (Kear 2005)) and through being caught and drowned as bycatch in gillnets during the spring migration (Merkel 2004). Populations of this species in the high Arctic are subject to high shooting pressures, especially in spring, by indigenous peoples for food (Madge and Burn 1988, Byers and Dickson 2001). This subsistence hunting is likely to be sustainable at current levels (Byers and Dickson 2001).

Sources and Credits

1. (c) Paul Cools, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Paul Cools
2. (c) Francesco Veronesi, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), https://www.flickr.com/photos/francesco_veronesi/8591870979/
3. (c) Yukon Conservation Data Centre, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA)
4. Adapted by Yukon Conservation Data Centre from a work by (c) NatureServe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), http://eol.org/data_objects/28912215
5. Adapted by Yukon Conservation Data Centre from a work by Public Domain, http://eol.org/data_objects/27673878
6. Adapted by Yukon Conservation Data Centre from a work by (c) International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://eol.org/data_objects/31266107

More Info

• iNaturalist.ca taxon page
• All About Birds-- The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Animal Diversity Web
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• BOLD Systems BIN search
• CalPhotos
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
• Maryland Biodiversity Project
• NatureServe Explorer 2.0
• NBN Atlas
• VertNet
• Xeno-canto
• 日本のレッドデータ検索システム

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