An elderly fisherman living on tiny Cheney Island, nestled between Grand Manan and White Head Island, discovered a nest. Inside were six eggs. He recognized them immediately: rare Eider Duck eggs. Once abundant, the birds had been hunted nearly to extinction by the 1890s.
The nest was missing something crucial: the soft, insulating layer of down that Eider mothers normally pluck from their own breasts to line their eggs. That down was the very reason the species had been driven to the brink. Prized for its warmth and luxury, it had become fashionable to stuff pillows and blankets with the feathers, leading to widespread hunting of the birds.
Suspecting that the mother had met with misfortune, the old man carried the six rare eggs back to his modest home. There, he placed them under his pet duck. She accepted them without a fuss, and they waited.
It was the kind of thing you might expect from some sort of retired academic with a hobby farm, not a man who had eked out a precarious life at sea. But Simeon F. Cheney wasn’t typical.
Perhaps, if he had been born elsewhere, Cheney might be remembered today in science textbooks. Instead, he was born on an isolated rock aptly named Cheney Island, because his family had lived there for generations. He likely received no formal education.
He doesn’t appear to have considered himself to be anything more than a fisherman. But others saw more.
Dr. Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian Institution noted Cheney’s “assistance to many American naturalists.” L.R. Ingersoll called Cheney “the area’s first recognized local authority on natural history.” Maine’s “naturalist of the St. Croix,” George A. Boardman, joked that “he will probably be the one to find the bones of the Great Auk” — a mystery which fascinated naturalists of the era. Dr. J. Walter Fawkes — “The Dean of American Archeology” called Cheney “a natural naturalist … an epic observer of nature,” and noted that his “energy even in old age is something many younger naturalists have good cause to remember.”
Despite all this praise, Cheney remained fishing from a small boat in an overlooked corner of the Maritimes, remembered mostly in others’ footnotes. Even now, what exactly he did to draw the attention of these scientific luminaries is unclear. He left behind no papers, no memoirs, only stories like this one — of the six endangered ducklings he raised as he approached his 90th year.
After the eggs hatched, Cheney was faced with a problem: how was he to feed the ducklings? He made them a thin gruel of cornmeal and water, but they weren't interested.
Then he had an idea: sand fleas. He captured some and mixed them into the gruel. The ducklings finally ate.
“In picking out the live fleas, they would get some of the meal and became accustomed to the taste of it. After a time, they learned to like the meal and greedily ate it without the addition of the fleas,” explained H.A.P. Smith in a 1922 article in Canadian Field Naturalist.
As his ducklings grew bigger, Cheney would march to a nearby brook, with the six ducklings waddling behind him, following him like children. He would “turn over stones in order that the Eiders could catch the small eels and other tiny fish.”
Once the six Eiders grew into adults, Cheney finally set them free. The ducks, however, had other ideas. Rather than flying away, they stayed around Cheney’s house.
During the day, Cheney would let the ducks roam as they pleased. At night, he kept them safe in a pen.
The strange story of the old man on an isolated island with six rare Eider ducks as pets spread, attracting the curious. “Many visitors came to Cheney’s Island,” wrote Smith, “including many noted ornithologists of the day … the ducks were a great delight to the visitors.”
One day, “there came a man and his wife from Calais, Maine.” The morning after they left, Cheney’s ducks were gone. He was heartbroken.
“Nothing was heard of them for a month.”
Meanwhile, a friend of Cheney’s went to Calais for supplies. While in town, he heard a strange tidbit of gossip: two local residents claimed to have captured a flock of unusual “Sea Ducks.” They were keeping them as pets.
Intrigued, the Grand Mananer decided to investigate. He went to the address and peeked into the backyard. There, in a pen, were Cheney’s Eiders.
The Grand Mananer waited until nightfall. Then, under the cover of darkness, they quietly opened the pen’s gate…
The next morning, Smith wrote, Simeon Cheney opened his back door “to find the birds huddled together on the stoop … what was his surprise and delight … They waddled about him and flapped their wings and talked to him in their accustomed way, showing every indication of delight at getting back home again.”
The six ducks had travelled 50 miles, overland and across open sea, to return.
“These young ducks came safely back in a very short time after being given their liberty, which is only another instance of how wild birds will yield to kindness and protection,” wrote Smith.
In 1918, New Brunswick enacted one of its earliest hunting moratoriums, banning the killing of Eiders. The law worked. Populations rebounded for much of the 20th century.
Today, that recovery is under threat again. Eider numbers are dropping in Atlantic Canada, for reasons scientists don’t yet fully understand.
As for Simeon F. Cheney, he passed away not long after his ducks returned. His name faded, as such names often do. He never published a book, never held a university post, and had only rarely left his tiny island.
But one morning, on the stoop of his weather-beaten home, six birds came back. They had remembered the man who fed them, taught them, and let them go — and they returned, not because they had to, but because they wanted to.
It wasn’t the kind of recognition recorded in the annals of science. But it may have been the truest kind there is.
MORE GRAND MANAN BACKYARD HISTORY STORIES:
- The Dark Harbour Hermits (Hear it on the Backyard History Podcast) (Appears in Book One)
- The Wreck and Rescue of the Velma (Hear it on Backyard History Podcast)
- The Emperor of Grand Manan and the Mysterious Church Burning
