The committed mother - phase 2

Yesterday I mentioned that the female eider is such a committed mother that she incubates her eggs, for getting on for a month, without so much as a mouthful of food. The result is that she is starving and emaciated when her young hatch. At this point her trials and tribulations are far from over, I fear.

Once they leave the nest, the newly hatched ducklings are at serious risk of being eaten by marauding black-backed and herring gulls and the mother ducks face a fierce battle trying to protect their young ones. In an attempt to better deter the predators, broods of young join together to form large crèches which are protected by the joint action of their mothers and by other females, known as aunts, who have lost their eggs or have failed to breed for some other reason.

The males, meanwhile, are elsewhere doing the things that males do!

This small crèche passed by just as the sun made a fleeting appearance and lit up the water. It looks better through the binoculars.