Please see picture gallery below – if you have any pix please send to sheilaelliot@yahoo.com)

November Bird of the Month – Northern Shoveler 

 From Ben Kolstad’s article in the November Kite: (coming soon).

November’s bird of the month is another duck in the subfamily Anatinae, Anas clypeata. The ducks in this subfamily are all dabbling ducks or “puddle ducks”; the diving ducks are in the subfamily Aythyinae (your ring-necked, scaup, etc., are all in the genus Aythya). Ducks in the genus Anas are the prototypical duck: it’s the Latin word for duck! Clypeata means “furnished with a shield” which, depending on your source refers to the “shield-shaped” bill or possibly the red patches on the sides of the male. Whatever the translation of the Latin name, though, the large shovel-shaped bill (the previous genus for this duck was Spatula clypeata) is easy to recognize, even at a distance. That, along with its nearly worldwide distribution makes it, as Bent wrote back in 1951, “one of the best known and the most widely distributed ducks in the world.”

Northern Shoveler is an expected (but listed as “uncommon” on our bird list) winter resident in Palm Beach County, “seen each year but not expected on most field trips.” Despite its rather large bill, black in the drake and yellow in the hen, this is still only a medium-sized duck (average length 19″; Mallard is 24″).

Come to our November meeting to hear more about this bird.

(Photographer’s please note that next month’s December 2014 Bird will be the  Ring-necked Duck)