NJ The Garden State's Birds
View allAll Photos Tagged Shovel
A shoveler drake on the tack piece at Slimbridge Wetlands Centre, this was taken from the Stephen Kirk hide.
Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata), is a medium sized duck. Breeding males have dark green head, white breast, and chestnut sides and belly.
This is a first-year male Northern Shoveler. A mating pair is shown in the first comment below.
All three shovelers were seen at Merritt Island NWR, Florida.
Another shot of the shoveler ducks because I like them a lot 😊
They rarely breed in Denmark and will probably go to Sweden for the summer.
They have just taken off from the lake.
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This pair of Northern Shovelers were seen at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Florida.
The green-headed drake leads in this picture.
This Northern Shoveler drake gives me the eye as he swims by.
Taken 18 May 2019 at Spenard Crossing, Anchorage, Alaska
This shoveler couple was at the lake the other day; caught the in flight, but the thing that I noted was the light coming through their bills from the hole in the backside!
There were quite a few shovelers in New Mexico. They are easy to recognize by their large shnoz. (1) Speaking of their shnoz, I found this on Wikipedia: "Northern shovelers feed by dabbling for plant food, often by swinging its bill from side to side and using the bill to strain food from the water. They use their highly specialized bill (from which their name is derived) to forage for aquatic invertebrates. Their wide-flat bill is equipped with well-developed lamellae – small, comb-like structures on the edge of the bill that act like sieves, allowing the birds to skim crustaceans and plankton from the water's surface. This adaptation, more specialized in shovelers, gives them an advantage over other puddle ducks, with which they do not have to compete for food resources during most of the year. Thus, mud-bottomed marshes rich in invertebrate life are their habitat of choice.[14]"
This is a pic of the more colorful male, or drake in duck talk, taking off in the early morning at Bosque del Apache, NM. (Anas clypeata)
(1) From the web: Why is a nose called a schnoz? The word schnozzle may come from an alteration of the Yiddish shnoitsl, a diminutive of shnoits, from the German Schnauze, meaning “snout.” Several other nose-related Yiddish words begin with schn or shn, including shnabl and shnuk, both meaning “beak,” and shnoyts, meaning “snout.”
I visited Greenway on Sunday. The water level is alarmingly low, but the shovelers were still hanging around. Got several flight captures of these ducks.
Northern shovelers look similar to mallards given just a glance since males have a green head and females are mottled brown, but then take a look at those large spatulate bills - that have a shovel shape. These lovely ducks will work their way out west into the Dakotas to nest.
There were many water birds at Radio Road. Among the many was this juvenile Shoveler. He was enjoying swimming and foraging for food. They are often referred to as the "Spoonbill" or "Spoony" because of their unique spatulate shaped bill, which has about 110 fine projections (called lamellae) along the edges, for straining food from water.
This shoveler hen was making a quick transfer across the lake. I wasn't prepared for a flight shot, resulting in the wing motion. So, I'll call it artistic :)