Shoveler
| Shoveler | ||||||||||||
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Male Shoveler ( Spatula clypeata ); the white breast plumage is ocher-colored due to the habitat here. |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Spatula clypeata | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The shoveler ( Spatula clypeata , syn .: Anas clypeata ) is a holarctic common bird species from the family of ducks (Anatidae). It is only slightly smaller than the well-known mallard . The drake has strikingly contrasting plumage in its splendid plumage . In its coloring it is vaguely reminiscent of that of the shelduck . The shoveler can be clearly distinguished from this due to its smaller size and its typical duck-like habit .
The shoveler is a scattered breeding bird throughout Central Europe and a frequent breeding bird in northern Central Europe . The species is a medium-distance migrant and occurs in large areas of Central Europe during the migration. In some areas it also winters inland.
description
Adult shoveler appearance
The shoveler, up to 50 cm in size, weighs 400 to 1100 g and has a wingspan of up to 80 cm. The first thing you notice when you look at the eponymous spoon-like beak is up to 7 cm long.
The shoveler shows a pronounced sexual dimorphism . The drake's head is feathered in dark green. The up to 7 cm long beak has a deep dark gray color. The chest is white, the back plumage is dark and partially interspersed with white feathers. In the middle of the sides of the body there are red-brown areas of color. The lower tail cover is black and delimited by a white band against the red-brown flanks. The middle tail feathers are sepia brown and lined with white. With the outer tail feathers this white feather border is significantly wider. The eye iris is yellow and the legs are strikingly red in color. In the flight, the light gray forewings and the metal-green mirror formed by the arm wings stand out.
When resting, the male largely corresponds to the plumage of the female. However, the wings keep their colorfulness and the back and rump color corresponds to the plumage color of the magnificent dress. Another distinguishing feature is the male's slightly pink-colored flanks.
The female has a brown pattern and thus resembles other females of the genus Anas . It is particularly similar to the females of the mallard . It is easiest to distinguish from other Anas females by its chunky beak . The body plumage of the female shoveler is medium brown. The contour feathers are lined with light brown, which leads to a spotty, scaly appearance. The female shoveler has a brown beak and red legs. It is very difficult to distinguish it from the females of the other three species of shoveler.
The shoveler is not very shy and reaches a flight speed of up to 85 km / h. If it is startled, it flies up steeply like the teal.
A shoveler can live up to 20 years.
voice
The shoveler 'call sounds like "tock". It is not very noticeable and therefore rarely noticeable. The reputation of the females, on the other hand, is very similar to that of the female mallards . The instrumental sounds of this type of duck include a who-who-who as flight noise . It is particularly noticeable when the ducks fly up.
Appearance of the chicks and fledglings
The back, the rear neck and the head plate of the chicks are dark brown. Yellowish areas of color can be found on the body and sides. The side of the body is yellowish white to yellow. The front neck light gray. The face is a warm light brown. A brown eye stripe runs from the base of the beak over the eye to the nape of the neck. Dark brown spots can be found in front of and behind the eye. The chicks also have disproportionately large beaks. The upper beak of newly hatched chicks is brown-gray with a red-brown nail. The lower beak is flesh-colored to pale orange. The feet and legs are dark gray. In the growing shoveler, the bill increasingly turns a lighter blue-gray.
distribution
Shovelers are found all over the Holarctic. Their northern limit of distribution is 66 ° N and 68 ° N. The southern border of its distribution area is the Mediterranean area - where it has only a disjoint distribution area - and in Asia the steppes and desert zone. The southern limit of the distribution runs along the north of the Black Sea, the foreland of the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea and the steppe areas of Central and Central Asia. In North America, the breeding areas of the shoveler extend from central Alaska over the central area of the Rocky Mountains and the prairies to the northern parts of the United States.
The shoveler lives on nutrient-rich inland waters in the lowlands of Eurasia and North America . For example, the shoveler can be found in the entire Prairie Pothole region of North America. Their breeding areas also include the prairies of central Canada as well as Alaska and the north-western states of the United States.
In Europe it breeds in the east of Iceland, on the British Isles, where it is part of the fauna of Scotland and where it also breeds on the Orkney Islands and the Hebrides. It also breeds in large parts of Western Europe, Southern Scandinavia, and Central and Eastern Europe. There is a relatively large population in the Netherlands. Large populations can only be found again in the Baltic States. It prefers waters with rich vegetation and riparian zones covered with dense reeds . She prefers small and micro bodies of water to larger lakes and ponds, provided that these bodies of water also contain open and non-herbaceous bodies of water.
Outside the breeding season, the shoveler can also be found on the seashore and at salt lakes. In Germany they are mainly found in the Wadden Sea and on the offshore islands.
In winter, most of the Eurasian birds migrate to western and southern Europe and Africa . The European populations are migratory birds. Their place is taken by the shovelers, which have their breeding area beyond 60 degrees east latitude. For example, the British breeding birds migrate to southern France, southern Spain, Italy and North Africa. Breeding birds of Fennos Scandinavia and Russia overwinter in the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland as well as France and Spain. Numerous breeding birds in Central Europe show similar migratory behavior. At the same time, many breeding birds from the Volga Delta have been recorded as overwintering in Egypt and Kenya.
East Siberian shovelers migrate to the Indian subcontinent and winter from Indochina to south-east China to southern Japan. Occasionally you will also reach Australia and New Zealand . The North American populations overwinter on the west coast of the United States, in Mexico, or the Caribbean.
habitat
As a habitat, the shoveler prefers eutrophic shallow inland waters as well as marshland with open bodies of water, oxbow lakes and wet grassland with temporary waters such as flood troughs and extensive ditch systems. During the breeding season it is rarely found in brackish and salt water. However, outside of the breeding season, it is common on coastlines and salt lakes.
Food and diet
The shoveler sifts the water with its beak for plankton , water fleas , insect larvae , worms , tadpoles and spawn . Planktonic and finely compartmentalized food dominates. The shoveler shows a characteristic body movement while foraging for food. It quickly turns the entire body and thereby stirs up the mud. This causes the food particles to rise to the surface of the water, which they then chatter through. It often swims in circles or serpentines while foraging for food. The neck is stretched. The beak is quickly opened and closed so that the water that has been absorbed exits sideways through the comb-like lamellae.
In addition to this diet, the shoveler can also root. It stays under water longer than other types of swimming ducks . Occasionally she dives underwater with her whole body. This is particularly noticeable in not too deep bog lakes.
Reproduction
The shoveler becomes sexually mature after one year of life. The pairing takes place in late autumn. The breeding pairs stay in their respective breeding areas from April.
In the courtship, which already takes place in the wintering area, the elements such as the grunt whistle from the drake or the so-called drinking , as can be observed with other gudgeon ducks, are missing . The characteristic features of the pair of shovelers include the pumping head movements carried out by both the male and the female. Another feature is a sham cleaning of the belly plumage, in which partners are turned towards the bright green wing mirrors. Conspicuous short sightseeing flights, which the shovelers only show in the breeding territory, are also part of the courtship. They end as soon as the female starts laying eggs.
Both sexes are involved in the choice of the nesting site. The female builds the ground, close to the water well in vegetation hides a from plant parts existing nest . It is mostly found in the bank area of the waters. Preferred locations are the bank bushes, the herbaceous vegetation bordering the bank area and sedge bulbs. Shovelers rarely breed in the reed or in the floating leaf zone. The breeding season usually extends from May to July. The earliest egg-laying takes place in Western and Central Europe in the 3rd decade of April. However, the main season is the first half of May to the beginning of June.
The clutch usually comprises eight to twelve eggs. If the clutch is lost or the female is so disturbed during the breeding season that she gives up the clutch, additional clutches are rare. The eggs are gray-green in color, about five centimeters long and weigh between 35 and 43 grams. The clutch is only incubated by the female. At the beginning of the brood, this leaves the clutch once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The breeding break can initially last up to two hours. They are reduced to 30 minutes as the brood continues and can even be completely eliminated shortly before the young hatch. The breeding period is a total of 26 days. The male stays near the nest during the breeding phase and warns of approaching predators. The temptation of predators by the male has also already been described. Freshly hatched dune young hide under the female until all the chicks have hatched. After the last chick hatches, the female immediately leads her flock to the water and remains there with them in the vegetation zone. The young can fledge after 40 to 45 days.
Inventory and inventory development
The total number of breeding pairs in Europe is estimated at around 170,000 to 210,000 breeding pairs for the period 1998 to 2002. Most of them breed in European Russia. The brood population in Central Europe is around 13,000 to 16,000 breeding pairs for the same period. They breed mainly in northern and eastern Central Europe, while there are only scattered breeding occurrences in the south and southeast of Central Europe. In Switzerland the species hardly occurs, in Austria 160 to 330 breeding pairs breed, in Germany there are 2,100 to 3,300. The Netherlands has the largest breeding pair population with 8,000 to 9,000 breeding pairs. In the Red List of Germany's breeding birds from 2015, the species is listed in Category 3 as endangered.
The shoveler initially expanded its area towards the end of the 19th century and increasingly settled as a breeding bird in Great Britain and parts of Central Europe such as eastern Germany and Poland. There was a significant expansion in the 1930s when the shoveler began to breed on Lake Constance, Lower Saxony and the Icelandic Lake Myvatn . At the same time, there was a sharp increase in the Ismaninger pond area in Bavaria as well as in Scandinavia and Finland. This increase was due to an improved nutritional situation in increasingly eutrophic bodies of water and an increasing number of new bodies of water that offered the shovelers suitable living conditions. The Central European population continued to increase slightly until the 1970s, then from the 1980s onwards there was a sharp decrease, due to land losses in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany, among other things. Regions where this trend has not been observed include areas where rewetting and other protection measures have been implemented. This applies to the west of Schleswig-Holstein and parts of the Netherlands as well as to Brandenburg in individual areas since 1990.
The causes of threat to the population are disturbances in the breeding waters as well as a loss or impairment of the breeding and feeding habitats, for example through drainage and dike measures. Since the species also uses wet grassland with ditch complexes and temporary bodies of water such as flood troughs, an intensification of grassland use also has a negative effect. Among other things, it also suffers from food competition with carp when the waters have a high population density. A research team that, on behalf of the British environmental authority and the RSPB, examined the future development of the distribution of European breeding birds on the basis of climate models, assumes that the shoveler will disappear over a wide area in western Europe by the end of the 21st century as a result of global warming. and Central Europe will come. According to this forecast, the distribution area will decrease significantly and shift to the northeast.
Systematics
The shoveler is a member of the group of shovelers, which includes four swimming ducks , including the fox shoveler , the Australian shoveler and the South African shoveler . Of these, the fox shoveler is the smallest species and also the link to cinnamon .
Shovelers are a classic example of the spread of very closely related species across the globe. All species of shoveler are similar in their habitus and differ only in small size differences and a different plumage. The uniform, spoon-like widened beak, which has developed into a strainer through the arrangement of fine lamellae, is striking. However, only the two most closely related species, the shoveler and the Australian shoveler, are considered a superspecies .
supporting documents
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Heiner Bergmann; Hans-Wolfgang Helb; Sabine Baumann; The voices of the birds of Europe - 474 bird portraits with 914 calls and chants on 2,200 sonograms , Aula-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-89104-710-1 , p. 60
- ↑ Christopher S. Smith: Field Guide to Upland Birds and Waterfowl , Wilderness Adventure Press, Belgrade (Montana) 2000, ISBN 1-885106-20-3 , pp.
- ↑ a b c Collin Harrison and Peter Castell: Field Guide Bird Nests, Eggs and Nestlings , HarperCollins Publisher, revised edition from 2002, ISBN 0007130392 , p. 74
- ↑ Rutschke, Die Wildenten Europas, p. 241
- ↑ Christopher S. Smith: Field Guide to Upland Birds and Waterfowl , Wilderness Adventure Press, Belgrade (Montana) 2000, ISBN 1-885106-20-3 , p. 70
- ↑ Gooders and Boyer, p. 75
- ↑ a b c Rutschke, Die Wildenten Europas, p. 242
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 103
- ^ Higgins, p. 1349
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 104
- ↑ Gooders and Boyer, p. 72
- ↑ a b c Rutschke, Die Wildenten Europas, p. 243
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 103
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 104
- ↑ Christoph Grüneberg, Hans-Günther Bauer, Heiko Haupt, Ommo Hüppop, Torsten Ryslavy, Peter Südbeck: Red List of Germany's Breeding Birds , 5 version . In: German Council for Bird Protection (Hrsg.): Reports on bird protection . tape 52 , November 30, 2015.
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 104
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 104
- ^ Brian Huntley, Rhys E. Green, Yvonne C. Collingham, Stephen G. Willis: A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds. Durham University, The RSPB and Lynx Editions, Barcelona 2007, ISBN 978-84-96553-14-9 , p. 82.
- ↑ Bauer et al., P. 103
literature
- Hans-Günther Bauer, Einhard Bezzel and Wolfgang Fiedler (eds.): The compendium of birds in Central Europe: Everything about biology, endangerment and protection. Volume 1: Nonpasseriformes - non-sparrow birds. Aula-Verlag Wiebelsheim, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-89104-647-2 .
- T. Bartlett: Ducks And Geese - A Guide To Management. The Crowood Press, 2002, ISBN 1-85223-650-7 .
- John Gooders and Trevor Boyer: Ducks of Britain and the Northern Hemisphere. Dragon's World Ltd, Surrey 1986, ISBN 1-85028-022-3 .
- PJ Higgins (Ed.): Handbook of Australian, New Zealand & Antarctic Birds. Volume 1: Ratites to Ducks. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0195530683 .
- Hartmut Kolbe: The world's ducks. Ulmer Verlag 1999, ISBN 3-8001-7442-1 .
- Erich Rutschke: Europe's wild ducks - biology, ecology, behavior. Aula Verlag, Wiesbaden 1988, ISBN 3-89104-449-6 .
Web links
- Spatula clypeata in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2008. Accessed January 31 of 2009.
- Videos, photos and sound recordings of Spatula clypeata in the Internet Bird Collection
- Shoveler feathers