The Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata) is the most extravagant dabbling duck found in Sweden — the male gleams with a green head, white breast and brick-red flanks, and both sexes carry the enormous spade-shaped bill that gives the species its name. It measures 44–52 cm with a wingspan of 70–84 cm and weighs 470–1,000 grams, with a bill up to 7 cm long and 3 cm wide at the tip. The male in breeding plumage shows a dark, metallic bottle-green head, a pure white breast, chestnut-brick flanks and belly, blue-green upperwing coverts, a large black bill, a bright yellow eye and orange legs; the female and eclipse male are mottled brown overall, resembling a female Mallard, but the oversized spade bill and blue-green wing coverts always give them away.
That remarkable bill is lined with up to 110 fine lamellae per side, and the duck feeds by swimming with it half-submerged, sucking water forward while its tongue pumps it back out, straining out plankton, water fleas, small crustaceans, insect larvae and tiny seeds — filtering several hundred litres of water a day, more efficiently than any other Swedish duck. The Shoveler is fairly quiet, the male giving a muffled, snarling "tock-tock" or "guk-guk" and the female a low "kerr-kerr", while its wings produce a distinctive whistle in flight. It breeds mainly in southern and central Sweden, with 1,000–3,000 pairs concentrated in shallow, nutrient-rich wetlands such as Hornborgasjön, Tåkern and Kvismaren, where depths of 20–80 cm allow effective filtering. The female lays 8–12 eggs in a ground scrape hidden in dense shoreline vegetation between May and July, incubating for 22–25 days; the ducklings leave the nest within a day and fledge after 40–45 days, while the male departs soon after laying to join bachelor flocks for the moult. As a short-distance migrant it arrives in April and heads to the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East for winter.
Read about this species in Swedish →