One Word That Seems To Have Fallen Out Of Use,

is Eiderdown,

photograph Georg_Wietschorke/Pixabay above is a Eider duck, (Somateria mollissima), people have known that Eiderdown, the feathers of the Eider polar duck, is one of the warmest natural fibres on the planet for a really long time, and nowadays they use it to make the best duvets and quilts, the ducks shed the down from their breast and uses it to line their nests to insulate them during hatching. It’s these nests that the hunters are after during their annual Eiderdown hunt, every summer, around 400 hunters scour a small, remote island in Iceland’s Breizafjörzur Bay in search of the feathers,

“When we have eggs, we take only part of the down, and when Eider is already out of the nest, we take everything,” Erla Fridriksdottir, head of King Eider, one of the country’s main exporters, told AFP. “You have to be able to pick up a 40-50 gram package between two fingers and if it remains intact and does not fall out, then the down is of good quality,” one eiderdown inspector said, but before you rush out to buy one of these Eiderdowns remember a simple duvet with 800g of feathers sells for about 640,000 Iceland Krona, at todays rate, £3,668.00 or $5,091.50, no wonder the one I used to have was filled with chicken feathers!