Yawn!

If you lost interest in borealis Common Eiders, look away now. Here's a sensible post from Id frontiers today, by Harry Lehto:

Interesting Eider discussion. From your web page [Norman van
Swelm's site] I quote
"So I propose to re-acknowledge the northeast Canadian
orange-billed (male) Eiders as borealis : the Canadian Eider
and the green-billed arctic Eiders as arctica : the Greenland
Eider!"
I have not been looking very carefully at the detailed bill
color of Eiders in Finland, but if my memory serves correct
and Sampo Laukkanen's and other's photographs on
www.tarsiger.com reflect the truth e.g.
http://www.tarsiger.com/images/SL/sommol_lagsi_k93(24).jpg
http://www.tarsiger.com/images/SL/sommol_lagsi_k93(18).jpg
then I have hard time claiming that these are green-billed
birds. Well, they are not orange either.  I have no doubt that
these birds are from the local breeding population.
Please accept my ignorance on the intricacies on the racial
identification of Eiders, but how would you separate the Brouwesrdam
Jan 27 2007 from a Finnish Eider shown in the pictures above?
Regards
Harry
hlehto(at)utu.fi

These Finnish birds are like the ones I see off Newtonhill, and astonishingly like Norman's Dutch birds.

On the other hand, I've had *this* pointed out to me, a photo by Bruce Mactavish of a rather fine v-nigra (see if you can spot it!) among borealis in Newfoundland.