Spectacled eiders are large sea ducks with a very noticeable difference. The colourful males are distinguished by black feathers surrounding white eye patches, looking much like a pair of spectacles! The females in comparison are much less showy.

Spectacled eiders arrive along the coast of Alaska and northeastern Siberia to breed during spring, making nests next to ponds out of the tundra's high grass. But little is still known about where spectacled eiders spend the winter, it is probably somewhere in the Bering Sea. They differ from other eider ducks in that their feathers extend down to the nostrils on the bill.

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