Post by whiterose on Oct 14, 2007 15:37:59 GMT -5
Eider duck deaths puzzle researchers
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A dead and decaying eider rests near Duck Harbor in Wellfleet. Researchers are collecting sick and dead eiders to find clues to annual die-off.
Cape Cod Times
By Doug Fraser
STAFF WRITER
October 11, 2007
WELLFLEET — The white sandy shore of Duck Harbor is great for beachcombing.
Lobster buoys, rope, driftwood, even a sailboat wash ashore here.
COMMON EIDER
Largest duck in Northern Hemisphere at 20 to 28 inches long, weighing from 2.5 to more than 6 pounds.
Summers on breeding grounds in northern Maine up into Arctic Canada. Winters in Southern New England, especially Cape Cod Bay, and
down into New Jersey.
Dives to sea bottom
to get shellfish, crabs
and snails.
But among the piles of twisted eelgrass, smooth stones and jingle shells at the wrack line are scores of common eiders. Beaks open, necks in a still-sinuous curve, the wings sodden. Dead.
It's a bit of a jolt for beach walkers, and Bob Prescott, director of Massachusetts Audubon Society's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, has been hearing about it.
"We were getting calls every day over the holiday weekend," Prescott said.
Common eiders fly from their breeding grounds in northern Maine, the Canadian Maritimes, and Arctic regions to Southern New England, and as far south as New Jersey. A major portion of the population, hundreds of thousands of them, may spend the winter in Cape Cod Bay, eating mussels, crabs and snails.
www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071011/NEWS/710110330