Gould stated that Steller's Duck was 'a member of a great group of Diving Ducks which is peculiar to the northern regions of Europe and America'

It is interesting to note that Wolf complained to his biographer A.H. Palmer, that Richter's lithograph drawn from his watercolour was over coloured. It was 'Dreadfully hard, and stripey and streaky' he said.
The two lifesize males in the foreground of the illustration and the female in the distance, were drawn from 'specimens obtained from the Waranger Fjord by Mr Alfred Newton'.

DISTRIBUTION: Breeds Arctic Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada. Winters south to Baltic Sea, south Kamchatka, Kuril, Commander, Pribilof, and Aleutian islands, and Pacific coast to south British Columbia. Rarely seen in Britain and then mainly in spring and autumn in northern Scotland