Menoturals; Eider This, or Eider That

It's that wonderful one day of the month when the LLB Gang's Nature Friday coincides with my own Final Friday Feature!

Today I want to share a little about the Common Eider, the largest sea duck in the Northern Hemisphere and the second largest in the world. The Muscovy takes the overall title, although it is native to the Southern Hemisphere.

For anyone who has seen and experienced the presence of the Eiders, it's hard to forget them! I adore them, and here on the Clyde, they are permanent residents, although it is only now, as we build up to breeding season, that the flocks start to gather on the shore and display behaviours emerge. I captured this short video a few days back, as three females (the darker ones) drew the attention of a larger group of males. I missed the really big diving session, but the females (literally) ducked under, and the males, in synchronous fabulosity, followed them. They all emerged just before I got the camera working, so you are seeing the aftermath of that spectacle, but still a little of the fluttering and muttering...

That's a relatively small group; what you cannot see here is the much greater number that were in the bay. The almost constant flapping of the wings is less about males seeking to impress females and more about showing prowess to other males as they compare and compete for the right to mate.

Eiders tend to live their entire lives hugging the coastline, occasionally extending into more pelagic regions, and can fly up to 50 mph. The courtship display indicated in the video is actually quite early, as the season generally begins in November and goes on all the way through to spring... but hey, who puts boundaries on flirtation, eh?!

Nests are made on the ground and lined with down feathers, plucked from the female’s own breast.  The clutch can be anything up to eight eggs. A month passes before the chicks hatch. The female doesn’t feed while on the nest and may lose 30% of her body weight in this time. Note: the males take no part in rearing or caring for the offspring... The Gulls have one over them on that score!!! Ducklings take to the water within 48 hours of hatching. They are at their most vulnerable at this time, and they group together in creches supervised by mother ducks. Other females (called aunties) join the creches to help warn and protect them against predators. The ducklings learn to feed themselves pretty quickly.

Their large feet and strong muscles allow eiders to dive or swim to a depth of 10 metres. Their main food source is shellfish, particularly mussels, which occasionally causes issues where mussels are farmed.

One thing I adore when watching the eider flotillas is listening to their chatter. A lot of their calls are like hearing human voices from the other shore...

(If you enjoyed listening to that, you can hear a whole range of different Eider sounds on this page...)

Many of you may be familiar with the traditional bedding material eiderdown and may even call your duvets by that name, even if they aren't actually filled with feathers. It may interest you to know that, unlike common goose or duck down—which is historically and currently obtained as a byproduct of the meat industry—true eiderdown relies on a unique, ancient relationship between humans and wild Common Eider. During the nesting season, female Eider naturally experience hormonal changes that loosen the feathers on their breasts. They pluck this ultra-soft down themselves to line their nests and keep their eggs warm. For over a thousand years in places like Iceland and Norway, coastal farmers have built sanctuaries and shelters to protect the wild ducks from predators like foxes and seagulls. As the birds return to the same human-guarded spots every year, farmers can gently swap out some of the down with dry hay while the duck is incubating, or wait until the end of the season, when the ducks abandon the nests to head back to sea. Because the birds are never captured, plucked alive, or slaughtered for their feathers, eiderdown remains one of the world's oldest entirely sustainable and ethical wildlife harvests.

I hope you enjoyed that little tale of a fantastic duck... and to end this post, I will link to this delightful photo essay of Alpine Alpacas - go on, it'll make you smile!

Menoooooorrrkkk!!!

Okay, a full etherwobblies post, because it is making me ropable. It prompted me to do a little clean-up, furniture-shift on the blog page. (I am preparing this post a week before you read it - so one does have a little hope that things will have been sorted by now... which may render this post obsolete, but it's good to vent!... update follows below...)

I know that quite a few of you are facing the same. First, there was the comments nonsense (though that was mostly sorted out pretty quickly). Spamming valid comments now happens only once in a while. Not more than once every couple of weeks - or even longer now. The 24 hours without being able to comment at all caused quite a flummox, but also proved that Google can, if it chooses, fix things. That's why this fiasco with the delayed, or just totally not updating, delivery of posts from followed blogs to the reader is beyond frustrating. I asked the question...

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DROP YOUR 'STONE IN THE POOL' OF THOSE WISHING GOOGLE TO PAY ATTENTION, YOU CAN CLICK THE "I HAVE THE SAME QUESTION" BUTTON ON THIS PAGE. You might look at that and think it's registering a rather low number, but remember that, statistically, for each person who makes an effort to register or respond to such things, it is considered to be representative of anything from 600 to 1000 people who don't leave their mark for any variety of reasons.

A few of you remarked on my earlier post that you use Feedly. I did once sign up for that a few years back when there were issues, but I really didn't like it. A couple of weeks ago, I went back to my blogrolls (as I had them) to see who posted that day... then those stopped updating, too!

So, as far as my own web page is concerned, I have now created a new page and transferred the blog listing from my dashboard. It does contain links to NN/NN and Cup On A Bus, but I am keeping them there because Gail and Joanne meant so much to me. As it says right at the bottom of the home page, blogpals live on through their blog posts. There are also quite a few blogs on there that infrequently, or almost never, post, but are worthy enough to remain on my list - just in case.

Anyway, that's me having moved a few widgets around and updated the pages. You can now access the privacy policy from the footnotes under 'Read About...'. 

There was one or two muttering about moving to WordPress... but I've been there and done that a few years back and found that it has its own issues - so have plumped for 'better the devil you know'... I've learned that things do eventually get sorted, but in the meantime we just have to set our jaws and find the ways that work best for each of us.

UPDATE: Okay, I left that in place because it took some effort to compose last week - it is now a few hours before the post goes live, and as of 36 hours ago, the reader page updating issue has mostly been cleared up. Not 100%, but definitely a major improvement. The ongoing tinkering is causing things to lag, not just in Blogger, but in Chrome as well - anyone else experiencing that when putting in an enquiry - the endless looping, and when you start again, it works pronto? 

Anyway, with each update of the system now, it seems that more and more AI tools are being buried within, so that it is quite literally impossible to be free of the thing. During the week since I drafted the post, Google came out and admitted that their AI had also 'gone rogue' in a 'few cases', but are otherwise being very coy about where, when, and what. This fuels my impression that they fell foul of their own 'improvements'. 

Hey ho... that's me 'downloaded', ta for listening!

Menoizikul; Midweek Musicalisms

Capping off our mini Holst fest, here is the longest of the choices, but also the earliest work, coming a full 15 years before The Planets... it is not as rounded and satisfying as the later work, but is still unmistakably Holst.

Now, do you think I got through an evening of researching items for this little bloggy without being offered up all sorts of renditions - or sections of - The Planets Suite? And do you think I could resist? Tsk... is the moon green cheese.... Anyway, the algorithm threw me an item I think you would all enjoy. BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with Prof Brian Cox giving narration and a 21st-century perspective on the music. Go on, do yourselves a favour!