American wigeon

Voice

The drake whistles differently from Wigeon: a dry, three-part whi-whiu-whiu with a nasal, quacking quality, where Wigeon gives a shrill, clean wheeoo. The female answers with a low growling krr-krr. Heard mostly from displaying winter parties between January and March, when drakes chase one another.

Identification

The drake has a grey, finely speckled head with a cream-white crown stripe and a broad green mask running from the eye into the nape; breast and flanks are pinkish wine and a white flank patch sits before the black stern. Female and eclipse drake are warm rufous on the flanks against a sharply contrasting grey head, and show white axillaries in flight.

Confusion species

Everything hinges on Eurasian Wigeon. On the drake, a cream crown and green eye mask replace the chestnut head with buff blaze, and the flanks are pinkish rather than grey. On females the sharp break between grey head and rufous flanks decides it, backed by the white axillaries where Wigeon shows grey.

Habitat

Shallow water with short-grazed shores: flooded grassland, brackish creeks, freshwater lakes and tidal flats. In the Netherlands almost always among large grazing Wigeon flocks on wet grassland or beside freshwater lakes. Grazes on land or picks from the surface while swimming, and hardly ever dives.

Range and movements

Breeds in Alaska and Canada and winters across North America; in Europe a rare but near-annual vagrant. Dutch records involve a few birds each winter, mainly in the Delta, along the IJsselmeer and in Friesland. In Spain and Portugal it is much rarer, with scattered records in Galicia and the Ebro delta.

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

Where and when to look

Work the big Wigeon flocks on wet grassland from December to March, preferably in the morning when the birds graze tightly together. Go through them head by head with a scope; the drake's cream crown leaps out the moment he lifts his head. When a flock flushes, check the underwing for white axillaries.

Conservation status

Numerous and stable across its wide North American breeding range. European records concern genuine vagrants and say nothing about the population. Drainage of prairie wetlands and hunting pressure in the wintering areas are the familiar concerns, but the species absorbs them well for now.