Northern Shoveler, Spatula clypeata

Northern Shoveler, Anas clypeata, Males, Female, and Female and Male. Birds photographed within the San José del Cabo Estuary, Baja California Sur, March 2017. Photographs courtesy of Carol Snow, Del Mar, California.

Northern Shoveler, Spatula clypeata, Males, Females and Male and Female. Birds photographed in the greater Mexico City area, March 2021. Photographs and identification courtesy of Marina Sutormina, Stockholm, Sweden.

The Northern Shoveler, Spatula clypeata, is a dabbling duck and a member of the Anatidae Family of Duck, Geese and Waterfowl, which has one hundred seventy-four members placed in fifty-three genera, and one of ten global species of the Spatula Genus.

The Northern Shoveler is medium-sized in stature. They are strongly sexually dimorphic and dichromatic. The males have a brown or black head and neck, dark-brown breast and below and light brown flanks. They are an overall brown color with paler fringes, a grayer head and neck and a darker forehead and crown. They have a large blue wing patch. Their iris is bright yellow in males and brown or yellow-brown in females; their legs are orange. They have a large uniquely shaped bill that is elongated, widened distally and spatulate with a conspicuous series of comb-like lamellae along lateral edge.

The Northern Shoveler is found in a wide variety of wetlands habitats including freshwater and saline marshes, brackish lagoons, and tidal mudflats. They are generally found as solitary individuals or in pairs. They have a uniquely shaped bill ideally suited for straining small swimming organisms from the water. They feed by holding their bills in the water and while swimming strain out crustaceans, mollusks, small invertebrates (insects and their larva), seeds and plants by continually dabbling. They are the most territorial of the ducks with the males remain paired with females longer than other ducks. They have life spans of up to fourteen years.

The Northern Shoveler can be confused with the Blue-winged Teal, Anas discors and the Cinnamon Teal, Anas cyanoptera, both of which are considerable smaller in stature with smaller bills. The females are similar to the female Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos (smaller bill).

The Northern Shoveler is a winter visitor to Mexico being found throughout the country with the exception that they are absent from the extreme southern parts of the country within the states of the Yucatán Peninsula and Chiapas.

From a conservation perspective the Northern Shoveler is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely distributed populations. They are not heavily pursued by but are shot by duck hunters. The long-term viability is threated habitat destruction and degradation caused by human development of their breeding and wintering grounds.