I lived on a seabird breeding island off the coast of Maine for a summer doing research on the Leach's storm petrel, and we also had black-backed gulls, herring gulls, guillemots, and eider ducks. Eider chicks are insanely cute balls of the softest fluff! We'd do a lot of birdwatching from the lighthouse tower, and we'd watch the ducks in rafts on the water. There's a lot of study done on the social aspects of chick-rearing among eider females (the males hang out on their own). Multiple females will watch chicks, and will herd them together when an a predator (like a seal) is seen. There's a lot of uncertainty as to whether these "babysitters" are kin or not.
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