Anyone who has spent time on the rugged, castle-fringed coast of Northumberland will be familiar with the call of the eider duck. The male emits a fluty 'ahoooh' that sounds amazed and a little censorious. The female responds with a throaty cackle-Dame Barbara Windsor to the drake's Kenneth Williams, if you like. There's something good humoured, fond and comforting in the eiders' calling. It evokes feelings of nostalgia even in those hearing it for the first time.
The male eider is a seafaring dandy. There is a rosy flush to his white chest, a black flash like a Harlequin mask across his eyes and a streak of pistachio green down the back of his head. The female is altogether more practical. No show off, her reddish-brown plumage-which gives her the impression of a waddling Dundee cake camouflages her among the dried beds of washed-up kelp in which the ducks make their nests.
Northumberland is England's great breeding ground for eiders, which, hardy northerners that they are, rarely venture below the mouth of the River Tyne. The sea duck is the county's emblematic bird, its place in local hearts cemented by its relationship to Northumberland's patron saint, the simple, pious 7th-century hermit Cuthbert-known locally by the fond diminutive Cuddy.
This story is from the October 16, 2024 edition of Country Life UK.
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This story is from the October 16, 2024 edition of Country Life UK.
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