Photos by timlaman / You’ve probably heard the expression “like water off a duck’s back.” Here's where that idiom comes from. This spectacled eider’s feathers are so waterproof that the water doesn’t wet it at all—it just beads up and rolls off, as seen in these sequential frames. The spectacled eider is a near threatened species that breeds on the coasts of Alaska and Siberia. I photographed this male recently at the Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy (ripley_ducks) in Connecticut, a nonprofit breeding facility focused on maintaining genetic diversity of rare and endangered species, and an education center for the next generation of conservationists. #eider #ducks #birds #birdphotography #threatenedspecies