ML203776211

Détails de l'observation

Credit goes to Danny Danforth and Mark Rolerson for finding this bird. Notes from Louis Bevier " I agree it is a King x Common Eider hybrid. This is a spectacular find (King Eider’s scientific name is spectabilis!). Iceland is the best known site of such hybrids, which usually are the result of a male King mating with a female Common, and he follows her to her nesting ground (Iceland, in these cases). Those would be hybrids with a Common Eider subspecies not normally seen in North America. The bird could be from Iceland, but King and Common Eider overlap around Greenland and around Baffin Island, as well as westward in the Canadian arctic. There is one published record of a Common x King Eider involving the Pacific subspecies/species of Common Eider, S. m. v-nigrum. That bird was found on the Kent Peninsula, Nunavut. The bird in York County looks like a hybrid between one of “our” Common Eiders (either our S. m. dresseri or northern S. m. borealis), but without detailed measurements it would be hard to eliminate S. m. islandica. I think there have been reports of wintering King Eiders a long the coast of Maine displaying to female Common Eiders. If that resulted in a mating, then a bird like this could be from one of our Commons. So far, only male King X female Common are known, and only drakes have been described. In birds, male hybrids far out number females for genetic reasons, and in ducks, female hybrids would be harder to detect."