A gaggle of feminine eider geese with one male. (Simon Laroche), Creator offered
The frequent eider is a sea duck that nests in colonies on islands alongside the North American coast from Maine to Labrador, and within the estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence in Québec.
Eiderdown feathers cling to one another because of microscopic hooks on the barbs, the essential aspect of a down feather. The tangle of barbs, made up of barbules, traps air and provides down its insulating energy. These distinctive traits of eiderdown have been used for a whole lot of years to make mattress duvets.
In Canada, eiderdown harvesting is regulated by the Migratory Birds Conference Act. Collectors should receive a allow from Surroundings and Local weather Change Canada and comply with a rigorous protocol when visiting a colony to reduce disturbances. Pickers should additionally document the variety of nests they observe in a colony to assist observe eider populations.
As an affiliate professor within the division of organic sciences at Université du Québec à Montréal, I analysis the ecology and administration of migratory birds, significantly geese and geese. As a director of the non-profit conservation group Société Duvetnor, I co-ordinate eiderdown harvesting operations within the St. Lawrence estuary islands.
This text is a part of our collection, The St. Lawrence River: In depth.
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Down retains eggs heat
Every colony has from just a few dozen to some thousand nests. Eiders share their nesting islands with herring gulls and sea gulls, that are predators of eider eggs and ducklings.
Females return yr after yr to the identical island to nest and should reuse the identical nest. Colony adjustments are very uncommon, therefore the significance of defending nesting islands. A feminine begins to nest at about age three and might stay to twenty years.
Feminine eider on her nest.
(Francis St-Pierre), Creator offered
Every feminine eider lays between 4 and 6 eggs in a nest on the bottom that she strains with all the way down to hold the eggs heat and camouflage them from predators’ view. By plucking the down feathers from their breasts, females expose an incubator plate that enables higher warmth switch to the eggs to make sure embryo improvement.
Inhabitants monitoring
Since 2003, I’ve led a analysis mission that goals to grasp the inhabitants dynamics of estuary eiders. Members of my workforce be a part of down gatherers in capturing and banding females as they depart their nests. Banding knowledge make it potential to estimate, amongst different issues, the survival and constancy charges of females on the colonies. Our outcomes confirmed that eider populations within the estuary are comparatively secure.
Just one go to per colony is allowed per yr, and harvesting should be synchronized with the tip of incubation, which lasts a mean of 26 days. Down can’t be harvested after nesting, because it rapidly turns into soggy from dew and rain and due to this fact unusable. Hatching is pretty synchronous, and females depart their nest with their younger no later than 24 hours after the final egg hatches.
Frequent eider nest.
(Francis St-Pierre), Creator offered
Within the St. Lawrence estuary, down harvesting was executed in early June about 25 years in the past. It now takes place on the finish of Might. This advance within the eider nesting season demonstrates the results of local weather change.
The workforce of gatherers should progress systematically via a colony with out retracing their steps to permit the females to return to their nests, which they do inside minutes or hours of the pickers’ passage.
The quantity of down harvested from every nest varies in keeping with the quantity of down current. The rule is to go away sufficient all the way down to cowl the eggs, as a feminine would do when leaving her nest, which she does as soon as a day to go drink. Not like different duck species, feminine eiders don’t feed through the incubation interval. This specific behaviour is probably the results of predation stress by gulls on eider nests.
A luxurious useful resource
Down harvested from colonies should be cleaned to take away twigs, feathers and different particles that find yourself in nests. The truth is, solely 15 to twenty per cent of the down harvested from a colony may be cleaned and made into duvets. It takes about 170 nests to supply one kilogram of unpolluted down. Annual international manufacturing of eiderdown is between 4,000 and 5,000 kilograms, of which about 70 per cent comes from Iceland, 20 per cent from Canada and the remaining from Greenland, Norway, Finland and Russia.
Down collected from 2,530 eider nests on Isle Blanche by Société Duvetnor in 2016.
(Francis St-Pierre), Creator offered
Contemplating {that a} quilt requires about one kilogram of down, it’s clear that the annual manufacturing of duvets could be very restricted, therefore the excessive value that may fluctuate between $6,000 and $10,000 relying on the scale of the quilt. The wholesale value obtained for the sale of down varies from yr to yr and might attain $1,500 per kilogram.
Reinvesting earnings to guard the species
Société Duvetnor has been harvesting down from a dozen colonies within the estuary for 40 years. The revenues generated by down advertising have allowed Duvetnor to purchase islands frequented by eiders and different seabirds species. That’s how Île aux Lièvres, the Îles du Pot à l’eau-de-vie and the Pilgrims’ Archipelago have been protected.
Tour to the Pot à l’eau-de-vie Island lighthouse aboard Le Renard boat. Société Duvetnor supplies this ecotourism exercise thanks, partially, to earnings generated by eiderdown.
(Patric Nadeau), Creator offered
The earnings from down additionally permits Duvetnor to handle an ecotourism program that offers guests an the chance to find the islands of the Decrease St. Lawrence River. Stays in inns, chalets or tenting enable holidaymakers to watch, amongst different issues, broods of eider geese that feed on small aquatic invertebrates alongside the island shores.
This shut contact with nature permits guests to pay attention to the significance of conservation of those pure environments, that are protected partially by the earnings generated by down.
The eiders are, due to this fact, making an actual contribution to their very own conservation.
Jean-François Giroux is a director of the Société Duvetnor, a non-profit group devoted to the conservation of the islands of the Decrease St. Lawrence and to public training via an ecotourism program. Throughout his profession as a professor at UQAM, he obtained analysis grants from the Pure Sciences and Engineering Analysis Council (NSERC), the Quebec Analysis Fund – Nature and Applied sciences (FQRNT), Surroundings and Local weather Change Canada, and so on
