I have recently started to see a lot of migratory ducks and geese in the waters off of Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Some of them probably are just passing through, but others will stay with us all winter. On a side note, it is duck hunting season and periodically my peaceful reverie is broken by the sound of shotguns going off from the blinds in the water, not far from the trails that I regularly follow.
One of the most distinctive ducks in our area is the Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata) and I was delighted to spot several of them last Tuesday. Northern Shovelers have bills that are so large that they look almost cartoonish at times. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “The bill of the Northern Shoveler is big (about 2.5 inches (64 mm) long) and shaped like a shovel, but that odd-shaped bill also has about 110 fine projections (called lamellae) along the edges that act like a colander, filtering out tiny crustaceans, seeds, and aquatic invertebrates from the water.”
If you look really closely at the first photo, you can see some of those comb-like projections in the shoveler’s mouth. Northern Shovelers often swim slowly forward with their heads down and their bills partially submerged. Periodically they raise their heads, as in the second image, to let the water drain out of their mouths—perhaps that is when they swallow whatever they managed to catch.
The final photo shows the shoveler’s head-down position. It looks like it may have caught something in its mouth, but I cannot really tell what it might be.
The Northern Shovelers in these photos are probably all female, though there is a chance they might be immature males. I am hoping that I will soon spot some mature males, which have large black bills, bright white chest, rusty sides, and green heads. In case you are really curious to see what a male Northern Shoveler looks like, check out my January 2017 posting entitled “Goofy grin.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 