Smew

Voice

Usually silent. Displaying drakes give a soft, creaking krruh-krruh and a mechanical rattle that barely carries over water; females a low kerr. Only worth listening for in February and March, and then only from parties displaying at close range.

Identification

The drake is mainly white with a black eye patch, black lines across the neck and flanks and a black back. Females and immatures, the so-called redheads, have a red-brown cap reaching below the eye, cut cleanly against a white cheek and throat. The bill is short, grey and hooked; in flight the drake shows a large white wing panel.

Confusion species

Redheads are confused with female Goldeneye and with Slavonian Grebe. Goldeneye is larger, with a darker brown head lacking the sharp white cheek and a peaked, triangular head shape. On Smew the border between chestnut cap and white cheek is knife-sharp, and the bird looks compact with a stubby bill.

Habitat

Deep, clear fresh waters, large lakes, sand pits and quiet rivers; in hard frost birds move to whatever open water remains around the IJsselmeer and occasionally into brackish harbours. Breeds in tree holes in the northern taiga, often in old Black Woodpecker nests beside forest lakes.

Range and movements

Breeds in Fennoscandia and northern Russia and winters in north-west and central Europe. The Netherlands, with the IJsselmeer, the border lakes and the large rivers, is one of the key wintering areas. In Spain it is a rare vagrant, appearing only during extreme cold spells.

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

Where and when to look

Try the Randmeren or the Gelderse Poort in January or February, ideally after an easterly cold spell. Scan early in the morning from a dyke: Smew dive as a group and their whiteness picks them out at a kilometre or more.

Conservation status

The world population is stable, but Dutch winter numbers are falling as milder winters allow birds to stay further east. Threats are drowning in set gill nets, disturbance of moulting and wintering flocks by watersports, and loss of old hole-bearing trees on the breeding grounds.