catriona gunn

The warmest filling ever put inside a quilt cannot be farmed or made in a factory. It is left behind by a wild sea duck that has chosen, for about a thousand years, to nest next to one particular kind of person. The eider breeds on the coast of Iceland, and the female lines her nest with down plucked from her own breast. Each tuft is a tangle of microscopic hooks that cling to each other and trap air. Nothing synthetic has matched it, and the people who make polyester hollowfibre have been trying since the 1950s. Eiders are wild. They can nest anywhere on four thousand miles of coast. Year after year they come back to the same few hundred farms and settle within yards of the house, in old tyres, under upturned boats, against the doorstep. They come because of what the farmer does. For the six weeks of nesting the family stops farming and stands guard. They shoot the foxes and the mink. They string flags and old CDs to keep the gulls and ravens off. Some sit up through the white nights with a rifle and a flask. A duck that nests on a guarded farm raises her brood. One that nests on the next headland feeds a fox. When the ducklings have gone to sea, the farmer walks round and picks up what is left in the empty nests. It takes about 60 nests to make a kilo. Iceland gathers some three tonnes a year, most of the world's supply, and killing an eider has been against Icelandic law since the 1840s. Nobody owns the ducks. Nobody feeds them, fences them or breeds them. Each side simply worked out that it does better with the other one there. The polyester duvet on your bed was named after this bird. It is the only thing the two have in common.