The best bird calls ever - king eider and common eider

I have a collection of bird calls in my iTunes library (the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs), and I love to include those tracks in my random playlists.

The other day I was listening to some songs, and the recording of king eiders and common eiders came up.

It was fabulous.

The recordings at Cornell Lab's All About Birds aren't quite the same, but they're still wonderful:

King Eider sounds

Common Eider sounds

And all of that reminds me how grateful I am that the Cornell Lab bird stuff exists (the All About Birds site, the Merlin app, and their fantastic bird cams),

and also how glad I am that photographs at federal government websites are in the public domain. This photo of a male king eider from the Alaska Science Center is beautiful.