Eider Ducklings

We had a pleasant surprise as we walked along the shores of Loch Fleet on Friday, a large number of ducks with young. However, it took us a moment or two to realise that they weren't mallard but eider.

I had assumed, wrongly, that all British eider flew north to breed and bring up their young in exotic places like Shetland and Iceland. My surprise at seeing eider still in the mouth of Loch Fleet a couple of weeks ago should have made me realise that some, at least, breed locally.

There was no sign of any males. Apparently they lose interest once the eggs are laid and the female begins to incubate them. As soon as the ducklings hatch the females take them out onto the water. Here the ducklings are reported to form large 'creches' supervised by a few females while the others go off to feed.

To find out where the 'missing males' have gone, we checked the mouth of Loch Fleet when we visited Littleferry this morning and found fifty or more eider resting on shingle bank. While most of them looked like....

....females, left, and some of these may have been immature ducks, but some, right, were definitely the missing males in their rather scruffy summer moult plumage.

After a while the whole flock took to the watering and began feeding, diving together to find shellfish on the bottom. We also saw some flying up the loch towards where we saw the ducklings so perhaps they were the females returning to do their shift at the creche.