Hävringe Eider

Where Hävringe Eider has been

About common eiders

A heavy, thick-set sea duck that almost never leaves salt water, the eider rides the swell in long dark lines beyond the breakers and hauls mussels off the seabed whole. Drakes are startling black-and-white with a green wash on the neck; females stay brown all year, pressed flat on a nest scrape among dune grass. The Wadden Sea is its stronghold — and the place where its decline is most visible, with Dutch breeding numbers down from about 10,000 pairs in the mid-1990s to roughly 3,500 today.