The Eider Sanction
It’s 4:45 a.m., and I’m hunkered on a tussock overlooking a partially-thawed tundra pond, red-eyed but thinking warm thoughts, when something spectacular appears. I recognize it instantly as a bird I’ve traveled more than 700 miles to photograph and, suddenly, my fingers have started to thaw. High expectations have not prepared me for this. On the pond out front, daringly aglow in high-Arctic sunlight, gleams a vibrantly plumed king eider drake.
A king eider drake takes wing from a tundra pond last spring near Utqiagvik, Alaska.
An early-June morning outside of Utqiagvik, Alaska, complete with icy Arctic Ocean breeze catcalling in your ears, may seem the antithesis of springtime. But springtime it is. If it helps, just ignore the drifts that surround you like frozen whitecaps and focus on the snow-free troughs of windblown moss and tennis court-sized pools of standing ice water. That’s where the birds tend to be anyway.
The sun this time of year does not set in Utqiagvik. Even so, I was surprised on the short drive out of town to pass local children playing in the streets just after 3 a.m. At that raw hour I’d quickly located and photographed two of my target species – spectacled and Steller’s eiders. King eiders were next on my list, and it hadn’t taken much longer to find the bird now before me. Festooned with scarlet bill and green-blushed cheeks topped by an electric-yellow knob, the drake that morning stood out against the bleak landscape as a colorful contradiction.
Heavyset sea ducks that migrate ashore each spring to breed, nest, and raise young, eiders don’t linger on the tundra for long. After springtime broods have fledged, the birds return to saltwater for the rest of the year. All four eider species – king, Steller’s, spectacled, and common – are found in Alaska. A few days prior, while photographing out of Nome, I’d seen several pairs of common eiders trading between Safety Sound and the Bering Sea. Now much farther north, the remaining three species were most prevalent.
King eider in my sights, Canon R5 fitted with 500mm f/4 lens and ready to fire, I took my time approaching. Distant shotgun reports the evening before indicated area subsistence hunters were stalking eiders, too. The birds would be understandably wary.
Creeping closer, I realized the drake, resting at the edge of a pond, was accompanied by a less ostentatiously colored brown hen. Perfect! By the time I eased into position, the eiders had seen me. They craned their necks and watched suspiciously as I pressed the shutter button.
I spent perhaps 30 minutes photographing the pair before their heads began bobbing. I knew the birds were preparing to take flight, so I was ready when the drake lifted off the water, leaving me a colorful shot of a morning I’ll never forget.
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Utqiagvik, Alaska • June 10, 2024
A king eider hen, left, and its colorful drake mate display in a tundra wetland in Arctic Alaska.
