About 60 miles south of the Arctic Circle there is a tiny string of windswept mostly treeless islands half way up the coast of Norway. They're called the Vega Islands. They're mostly uninhabited, but every spring they get some very special visitors. Migrating eider ducks, hundreds and sometimes thousands of them, returning from the open sea, to nest. And waiting to greet them are a group of hardy Norwegians known as eider keepers. They protect the ducks from predators. All in exchange for the eider's luxuriously downy feathers ….”eiderdown” -  the lightest and most effective insulation on earth. 

Environmental writer Devon Fredericksen spent three months with an eider keeper and wrote about her experience in her upcoming book, Only the Birds Know: A Love Story Between a People, a Place, and a Remarkable Duck.

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THE WILD is a production of KUOW in Seattle in partnership with Chris Morgan Wildlife and Wildlife Media. It is produced by Matt Martin and Lucy Soucek, and edited by Jim Gates. It is hosted, produced and written by Chris Morgan. Fact checking by Apryle Craig. Our theme music is by Michael Parker.

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