Downed Eider

I have seen them on the grey frigid water throughout this harsh winter.  They first came in nervous flocks on cool fall winds to Cape Cod Bay, skimming low, first east then west from beach to beach, searching a haven from colder winds and shorter days. 

In January I saw them hunkering down in Nauset Marsh before one of the worst blizzards, in amazingly great numbers, clouds of common eider fleeing from the open sea to the meager protection of the low sand spits and grasses.       

I walked the Morris Island Beach in Chatham at least twice a month this past season.  On each visit they lingered in the distance floating together toward North Monomoy away from contact with humans.  They were so numerous that I became dismissive of their presence, searching always for rarer visitors to the wildlife refuge.

But on this day, I came upon an eider pair up close and personal.  They both lay beached above the patchy wrack line, never to take to the air or sea again.  This lonely couple were downed forever, one a handsome male with black cap and striking white down, the other a pretty female with soft mottled brown feathers.  Up close they seemed larger than I had imagined.  Both were recently beached, plump with preened coats, with a healthy look, in disturbing contrast to their contorted attitude of limp death. 

The female had been tagged previously in Rhode Island by an unknown government employee.  Records show that she had been born in 2010 or before.  I tried to imagine her traveling with her companions north and south along the coast over these years, maybe finding some birdlike form of happiness coasting over the bays and floating on the inlets.  Now she has died with a companion of her own species and has been recorded in the archives of man, nameless but numbered.