BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Allen S. Moore" data-source="post: 1848890" data-attributes="member: 22662">On Friday I visited a small bay in the SW of the Isle of Man. At the head of the little bay I saw 2 duck eiders with 2 ducklings swimming close to the water's edge. The ducklings were partly grown, having brown down rather than the black down they are covered in when first hatched.I returned to the bay late this afternoon. Walking along, I heard what sounded like a fulmar cackling by the end of the headland at one side of the bay. Curious, as fulmars do not nest in this particular bay, I looked out and saw that the noise was from an eider duck swimming by a great black-backed gull which had a duckling of the same sort of colour as those that I saw on Friday. The gull picked up the duckling and swallowed it in one go. It was very much a case of "nature red in bill and claw". The incident reminded me of what Stephen Reeves, Ornithological Warden of the nearby Calf of Man Bird Observatory, wrote in his Annual Report for 2006, that a creche of 8 young eiders was halved in a matter of minutes after an attack by great black-backed gulls.I continued on my way. Returning about 45 minutes later I saw an eider duck swim to the head of the little bay where I had seen them on Friday. It was making the same sort of "fulmar" call that was made when the great black-backed gull had the duckling. The tide was out and there was some exposed wrack floating by the water's edge. Is the duck looking for the other duckling that had, perhaps, taken refuge in the more sheltered part of the bay? No duckling showed. The duck swam along the rocks along the edge of the bay, uttering the same call, which it made while lifting its head almost vertically. When it reached the end of the headland it swam back to the head of the little bay and repeated its search. It really looked as if it was searching for a duckling in the little nooks along the rocks and the floating wrack. Nothing. After another hour, maybe 1¾ hours after the death of the duckling, the duck swam away.The SW corner of the Isle of Man is the home of hundreds of great black-backed gulls. Most of those are on the Calf of Man and the little islet called Kitterland in the Sound. The Calf of Man was colonised by eiders in 1991, with the first nesting the following year. Eiders had been rare visitors to the Isle of Man up to that point, but numbers have increased markedly since then, with at least part of the increase being due to the ducklings that "got away." Indeed, I have sometimes seen little flotillas of eider ducks and ducklings swimming north along the coast as if to get away from the Calf of Man. Some ducklings die, but I am looking forward to enjoying watching this charismatic duck around our coasts for many years to come. Allen</blockquote>

Verification