Northern Shoveler

About the Northern Shoveler

The northern shoveler (Spatula clypeata), often known simply as the shoveler where other related species do not occur, is a common and widespread duck. It breeds in northern areas of Europe and throughout the Palearctic and across most of North America, and winters in southern Europe, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. It is a rare vagrant to Australia. In North America, it breeds along the southern edge of Hudson Bay and west of this body of water, and as far south as the Great Lakes west to Colorado, Nevada, and Oregon.

The northern shoveler is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies. The conservation status of this bird is least concern. The northern shoveler was first formally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae. He introduced the binomial name Anas clypeata. A molecular phylogentic study comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences published in 2009 found that the genus Anas, as defined at the time, was not monophyletic. The genus was subsequently split into four monophyletic... Wikipedia →