The Weird Magic of Eiderdown | Hacker News Reader

The Weird Magic of Eiderdown

theguardian.com

43 pointsvr467 comments

The article mentions the big difference between eiderdown and other downs, but doesn't really stress it. Eiderdown is different than all other commercial downs in that it is harvested from used nests, rather than directly from the bird. The birds pluck their own down, use it to line their nests, raise their chicks, and then the "farmers" collect the down after the ducks have left. All other downs are plucked by humans from a dead (or dying) bird.

I was excited enough about eider down to plan a vacation largely around it. Instead of Iceland, we went to the Vega Islands off the north coast of Norway. It was a beautiful area. The BBC has some nice pictures here: http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20181001-the-worlds-lighte....

It is worth pointing out that this is a two way relationship:

In addition to harvesting the down, farmers protect the birds and make sure they have good nesting grounds.

Actually, down is often harvested from living birds so they can regrow their feathers to be plucked again.

Here is a video from Peta. WARNING: It's not easy to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTfZiVi6Kdo

That's pretty horrible - but I skimmed through that and I didn't see any eider ducks (could be wrong though) - they are quite distinctive looking birds.

I grew up with an "Eiderdown" on my bed, and until now, mistakenly thought of it as a synonym for a quilt filled with feathers!

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/eiderdown

Any comparisons with aerogel?

They are hard to compare directly, since the "magic" of down is its compressibility, whereas aerogels are typically rigid. Eiderdown is actually on the lower end of elite downs as far as loft, which is measured as "Fill Power" (FP): https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fill-power-values-from-e...

That said, there is a new synthetic sleeping bag insulation that is using some amount of added aerogel fragments. Compared to that, high FP goose down of 800 or 900 FP is still much better insulation per ounce: https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/new-ul-synthetic-i....

I don't know if it's in any way a useful comparison, but combining the two links, one might conclude that eiderdown at a 500 FP is about as insulating as PrimaLoft Gold with added aerogel.

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