Northern Shoveler
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| iNorthern Shoveler | ||||||||||||||
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| Anas clypeata Linnaeus, 1758 |
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 European distribution. Light green: summer only. Blue: winter only. Dark green: all-year.
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The Shoveler or Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata) is a common and widespread duck which breeds in the northern areas of Europe and Asia and across most of North America.
This dabbling duck is strongly migratory and winters further south than its breeding range. It is not as gregarious as some dabbling ducks outside the breeding season and tends to form only small flocks.
This species is unmistakable in the northern hemisphere due to its large spatulate bill. The breeding male has a green head, white breast and chestnut belly and flanks. In flight, pale blue forewing feathers are revealed, separated from the green speculum by a white border.
The females are light brown, with plumage much like a female Mallard, but their long broad bill easily identifies them. The female's forewing is grey.
In non-breeding (eclipse) plumage, the drake looks more like the female.
It is a bird of open wetlands, such as wet grassland or marshes with some emergent vegetation, and feeds by dabbling for plant food, often by swinging its bill from side to side and using the bill to strain food from the water. This bird also eats mollusks and insects in the nesting season. The nest is a shallow depression on the ground, lined with plant material and down, usually close to water.
This is a fairly quiet species. The male has a clunking call, whereas the female has a mallard-like quack.
In the British Isles, they are best known as a winter visitor, although they breed in southern and eastern England, especially around the Ouse Washes, the Humber and the North Kent Marshes, and in much smaller numbers in Scotland and western parts of England. In winter, breeding birds move south, and are replaced by an influx of continental birds from further north. The UK is home to more than 20% of the North Western European population.
The Northern Shoveler is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.
No living subspecies are accepted today. Fossil bones of a very similar duck have been found in Early Pleistocene deposits at Dursunlu (Turkey). It is unresolved, however, how these birds were related to the Northern Shoveler of today; i.e. whether the differences noted were due to being a related species or paleosubspecies, or attributable to individual variation.(Louchart et al. 1998)
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Anas clypeata. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
- Louchart, Antoine; Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Guleç, Erksin; Howell, Francis Clark & White, Tim D. (1998): L'avifaune de Dursunlu, Turquie, Pléistocène inférieur: climat, environnement et biogéographie. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris IIA 327(5): 341-346. [French with English abridged version] DOI:10.1016/S1251-8050(98)80053-0 (HTML abstract)
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