Common shelduck

Voice

The male gives a soft whistling swee-swee-swee, the female a fast, nasal rattling ak-ak-ak-ak that sounds like laughter. Heard mostly from displaying parties on the flats between February and April, and during the chases that follow over the breeding grounds.

Identification

Bottle-green head and neck with a strong gloss, a white body, a broad chestnut band around breast and mantle, and a black belly stripe. The legs are pink and the bill red; in spring the male carries a conspicuous knob at the bill base. Juveniles lack the breast band and show a white face with a dark crown.

Confusion species

Confusion is mainly with Ruddy Shelduck, which is uniformly rusty orange with a pale head, no gloss and no band. Juvenile Shelducks, with their white faces and dark caps, are regularly claimed as sawbills, but they swim high and broad in goose-like fashion and lack the thin hooked bill.

Habitat

Sandy and muddy coasts, saltmarsh, brackish creeks and saline lagoons, but also sand pits and industrial land far inland. Nests in rabbit burrows, under dense scrub, in straw stacks or in boxes on dunes and dykes. Feeds by scything the wet mud for snails, crustaceans and worms.

Range and movements

Breeds along almost all north-west European coasts, concentrated around the Wadden Sea and the Dutch Delta, and the Netherlands holds a large share of the European population. Inland colonisation continues. In Spain it breeds more locally, in the Ebro delta, the Manchegan salt lakes and Doñana, where many birds also winter.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Visit a high saltmarsh along the Wadden Sea in July or August, when tens of thousands assemble to moult and come close at high tide. In April and May, first light on the dykes shows how noisily paired birds hold their territories.

Conservation status

A numerous and fairly stable breeder in the Netherlands, though numbers on the flats have slipped with a poorer food supply and disturbance at the moulting grounds. Trampling of nests, fox predation and the loss of rabbit burrows matter locally, while inland populations elsewhere in Europe are still increasing.