For many years on the tiny and remote Norwegian island of Fjærøy, Anna Måsøy has tended eider, wild sea ducks that come to nest there. Each year she cleans out their old nests, rebuilds broken ones, waits for the birds to arrive, and deters predators when they do. When the ducks leave, she gathers their downy feathers, which are made into just a handful of duvets. There are other women like her, and these duck women, as farmer and author James Rebanks affectionately calls them, make sure that eider chicks can hatch and stand some chance of survival; it is a species whose population is dwindling.

Anna was the first duck woman James met.