Family:
The king eider is a large, heavyset sea duck with an oblong head, a short, thick neck, and a small, heavy bill. The male has a mostly black body with white flanks, back, underwing, and upperwing, and a salmon pink breast. The head is blue-grey and the face is greenish with a large orange plate over the red bill which creates a bulge on the forehead. There is a thin black line around the bill and it has a white nail. The eyes are brown, and the legs and feet are pale yellow.
The female is rusty brown with darker brown bars and chevron markings, and a white wingbar. The neck and cheeks are paler brown, and the bill is black.
In eclipse plumage, the male is similar to the female but darker, and there is usually some white on the mantle.
King eiders eat molluscs, crustaceans, and marine insects and larvae. It hunts its prey by diving deep underwater, or by picking from the surface of shallow water. It forages in flocks, sometimes with other species of sea duck.
King eiders breed on the Arctic coasts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia on barren tundra, usually near water. It migrates to spend the winter in arctic and subarctic marine areas such as the west coast of Greenland, eastern Canada, and northern Norway.
