Name

Spatula clypeata

Northern shoveler

Framing

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata

Class: Aves

Order: Anseriformes

Family: Anatidae

Genus: Spatula

Species: clypeata

Habitat

Aquatic environments. Lakes and lagoons, also rivers and other aquatic environments, sometimes in coastal waters. During the breeding season, these birds choose marshes, lagoons or marshes with meadows, crop fields or open woodlands nearby, while during the winter they settle in a wider variety of environments, provided they have abundant aquatic vegetation and shallow water.

Feeding

The spoonbill's peculiar beak is perfectly designed for filtering all kinds of plant matter and small animals (insects and their larvae, crustaceans, molluscs, etc.) in shallow water. To do this, the bird places its beak horizontally on the surface of the water, sucks up the silt and retains the small organisms that serve as food in the lamellae on its edges. When it is in deeper water, instead of using this technique, it tilts on its body like any surface duck in order to remove submerged vegetation from the bottom; it also grazes in crop fields, rice fields or pastures, where it tends to gather in large flocks.

Distribution

Holarctic, with a very wide breeding range, which in Europe mainly extends over the northern, central and eastern regions, while it is rarer in the south.

Conservation status

In Spain it is considered near threatened in the Red Book of Spanish birds.

Additional information

Free-living. Gregarious, in pairs during breeding. Unmistakable by the large spatula-shaped bill, the males also have a green head, white breast and brown flanks, the female has green mirrors.