Somateria spectabilis
Silhouette: Edwin Price · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~70% in a week >90%
The king eider (pronounced ) (Somateria spectabilis) is a large sea duck that breeds along Northern Hemisphere Arctic coasts of northeast Europe, North America and Asia. The birds spend most of the year in coastal marine ecosystems at high latitudes, and migrate to Arctic tundra to breed in June and July. They lay four to seven eggs in a scrape on the ground lined with grass and down.
When he first described the king eider in 1758, in the 10th edition of his opus Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus assigned it to the genus Anas, along with the rest of the ducks. In 1819, William Elford Leach moved it and the other large eiders to the genus Somateria, where it has remained since. It is very closely related to the other members of its genus, and is known to hybridise with the common eider. Despite its very large range, it is monotypic.
The genus name Somateria is a combination of the Greek words sōma, meaning "body", and erion, meaning "wool"; the combination (i.e. "wooly body") is a reference to the eider's famously thick, soft down. The specific name spectabilis is Latin for "showy", "remarkable" or "worth seeing", a reference to the handsomeness of the adult... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Svalbard | 🇳🇴 Norway | |
| 2 | Great Bear Rainforest | 🇨🇦 Canada |
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kazan | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 2 | Boston | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 3 | Chicago | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 4 | Moscow | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 5 | Miami | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 6 | Toronto | 🇨🇦 Canada | |
| 7 | Los Angeles | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 8 | Helsinki | 🇫🇮 Finland | |
| 9 | San Francisco | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 10 | New York City | 🇺🇸 United States |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saint Louis Zoo | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 2 | Tierpark Hagenbeck | 🇩🇪 Germany | |
| 3 | Alaska SeaLife Center | 🇺🇸 United States | |
| 4 | Montreal Biodome | 🇨🇦 Canada |
Possible
About 30% of wildlife watchers report a King Eider sighting in Svalbard on a given day, based on 586 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 16th most-seen of the 48 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 70%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May
In that month about 60% of wildlife watchers report a King Eider in Svalbard on a given day, against about 10% in August, the lowest month. November to January have too few records to rate.
Between 10 am and 1 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most King Eider sightings with a recorded time, and about 7 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Yes
Of the 2 parks where we can rate King Eider sightings, Svalbard has the highest daily chance: about 30%. Next come Great Bear Rainforest (Canada, under 5%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the King Eider is recorded against all the birds logged in Svalbard (586 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
