The King Eider (Somateria spectabilis)

After my first trip to Alaska in 2009; I came to the conclusion that the Harlequin was by far the most handsome drake of any species of waterfowl I had held in hand. You may or may not believe this; but I still think that even after having the honor of harvesting big, beautiful King Eider drakes. Please do not misconstrue what I am saying…..the Harlequin, in my opinion only, still may be the most overall eye appeasing of waterfowl; but the King Eider falls into a whole different realm of beauty. It is the mystique of the bird itself that projects him to the ultimate status to pursue for the experienced waterfowler. I mean let’s face it…..any duck named the King has to be special to begin with. As I learned while carving my decoy and studying many, many photos, the body of the King Eider (coloring) is relatively simple mainly being black and white excluding the peach/cream colored chest. It is the magnificent baby blue color of the head that fades down into almost iridescent green that gives him his looks. Other than that and the most obvious……it is his lobe that separates him from all other waterfowl. On a mature bird, it is a large fleshy yellow or orange colored piece of fatty tissue outlined in black protruding from his skull just above the bill. A non-resident of Alaska is allowed four of these spectacular birds a season. We had a gunning group of six in which we killed one short of having a full six man limit of King Eider. That gave us a good number of birds to see the how the aging process takes hold on the drakes. First year drakes are drab like a hen with only the outline of the lobe, into this second year comes the magnificent coloring of the head and lobe. Almost everyone reading this who knows me knows I’ve taught myself of basic waterfowl biology, as well asked many a question to college educated waterfowl biologists practicing in the field so I could learn…….you can see the pin feathering and the smaller lobes in the 2-3 year old birds and then when they reach “bull” status; some of their lobes are almost grotesquely enormous! One thing that I definitely noticed with my untrained eye is that drakes that had yellow lobes had a yellow tint to their feet; this being the case and the majority of what we harvested……and birds that had the orange lobes were obviously larger, being in full plumage with few pin feathers and had an orange colored tint to their feet. I killed one behemoth that may fall into grandpa status as by the photo below:

As far as field identification and spotting Kings on the wing or water…….in flight it is easily the white wing patches that give them away. On water oddly enough to me the chest area which is dark cream/peach color is what I spotted most often. All the drakes I saw on the water were either resting with their heads tucked in or behind them sleeping and their unmistakable “sail-like” tersial feathers always aloft. Not to leave out the ladies I will say in hindsight that the hen King Eider in full plumage is stunning. Almost dark red/dark brown with those flowing black feathers curling down beside the body and her noticeable white on the wing definitely give them a “Queen” like quality. Beautiful!!!

Historically King Eider breed above the Arctic circle; during the winter they stay as far north as possible where ice-free seas permit them to. They are hearty birds and are right at home in the frigid Bering Sea. I feel proud and honored to be in what has to be a tiny minority of waterfowlers to have hunted and seen them in the wild, much less be able to take a limit of them.