Long-tailed duck

Voice

The most musical duck in Europe: a far-carrying, yodelling, nasal ow-ow-owdelee or a-ahoolie, delivered in chorus by groups of males. Heard mainly on calm days from January to April, at night as well, and the sound carries for kilometres across open water.

Identification

Small, rounded and short-billed, with a steep forehead and a compact body that rides high. Winter males are largely white with a dark breast, grey face and a big dark brown cheek patch, long black tail pins and a pink band across the bill. Females and first-winters are brown and white with a dark crown and cheek smudge, and no tail pins.

Confusion species

In winter plumage it is unmistakable, but at long range juvenile Smew and female Goldeneye can cause doubt. Long-tailed Duck has wholly dark, unmarked wings with no white panel, which settles it instantly in flight; it also flies low and rolling, flashing black and white as it tilts over the waves.

Habitat

Winters on open sea and large brackish waters over sandy bottoms: the Baltic, the North Sea coast, tidal inlets and the IJsselmeer. Dives deep, sometimes to several tens of metres, for molluscs and crustaceans. Breeds beside tundra pools, arctic coastal lagoons and mountain lakes in Iceland, Fennoscandia and Siberia.

Range and movements

A circumpolar high-arctic breeder. The west European wintering population is centred on the Baltic; the Netherlands receives tens of birds each winter, mainly on the IJsselmeer, in the Wadden Sea and along the Zeeland coast. In Spain it is an exceptional vagrant on the Cantabrian coast.

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

Where and when to look

Try the Brouwersdam, the Afsluitdijk or the north Holland coast in January and February, choosing a day of strong north-westerly wind or the calm day that follows. Scan from a high dyke or pier; birds dive often and vanish for minutes, so keep working the same trough of water patiently.

Conservation status

The species has declined steeply, above all in the Baltic, its most important wintering area worldwide. Bycatch in gill nets, oil pollution, loss of benthic food and disturbance from shipping and wind farms are the main causes, with climate change affecting the breeding grounds. Dutch numbers have fallen in parallel.