The Eurasian Wigeon (Mareca penelope) is a whistling dabbling duck, the drake unmistakable with a chestnut-brown head, a gleaming yellow forehead patch, and a classic "blaze" across the face. It is a medium-sized duck, 42–52 cm long with a wingspan of 71–85 cm and weighing 500–970 grams. The breeding-plumage drake has a rufous-to-chestnut head with a bright yellowish-white forehead blaze, a finely vermiculated grey-white body, a pinkish-tinged breast and a black rear end, with a large white patch showing on the leading edge of the wing in flight; the female is uniformly reddish-brown to greyish-brown and more plainly marked, with a relatively short, pointed tail and a small, rounded body shape, and a short, high-set bill combined with a steep forehead is distinctive in both sexes.
The drake's call is one of the most distinctive in the bird world — a clear, loud, rising whistle, "wiiu", often heard from resting flocks and carrying a long way, while the female gives a low, rough growling note. Wigeon breed mainly in northern and central Sweden, concentrated around tarns in the mountains and bogs of Norrland, with a breeding population estimated at 10,000–30,000 pairs, though the species is most notable during migration, when large flocks rest on shallow lakes, coastal bays and coastal meadows, especially in Skåne and on Öland, during March and again September–November; as short-distance migrants, Swedish birds winter mainly in Western and Southern Europe. Unusually among dabbling ducks it grazes extensively on land, feeding largely on grass and tender vegetation on coastal meadows and fields as well as aquatic plants and algae in shallow water, with flocks sometimes grazing like geese on damp meadows. It nests on the ground near water, well hidden in tussocks or low vegetation, with the female laying 8–9 eggs and incubating alone for about three and a half weeks; the precocial ducklings are led to water shortly after hatching.
Read about this species in Swedish →