Northern pintail

Voice

The male whistles high and clear, a plaintive prreep recalling Teal but fuller and more drawn out. The female answers with a low, hoarse, throttled series, err-err. Heard mainly from displaying parties between December and March, and occasionally from birds passing overhead at night.

Identification

Long thin neck, small head and a sharply tapering rear end. The male has a chocolate-brown head with a white finger running up the side of the neck, a finely vermiculated grey body, a cream patch before the black undertail and two long tail pins. The female is plain coffee-brown with an unmarked face and an all-grey bill; the eclipse male resembles her but stays greyer and longer-tailed.

Confusion species

Female Mallard and Gadwall cause most of the trouble, but both are stockier and shorter-necked. Pintail shows a plain unstreaked head, an entirely grey bill with no orange, and a bronze speculum with a narrow white trailing edge. In flight the pointed wings and far-projecting neck settle it at range.

Habitat

Shallow, nutrient-rich water with open shores: flooded grassland, saltmarsh, brackish creeks, mudflats and rice fields. Breeds sparingly in damp dune slacks and on marshy islands in the north. Feeds by dabbling and by upending with head and neck submerged, favouring water about belly-deep.

Range and movements

A breeder of tundra and taiga across northern Europe and Siberia, with only a handful of pairs in the Netherlands. Large numbers winter in the Delta, along the Wadden Sea and on wet polders. Iberia holds important wintering grounds in Doñana, the Ebro delta and the rice fields around the Albufera of Valencia.

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

Where and when to look

Work flooded polders in December and January, and come in late afternoon when parties move from roost to feeding areas. Scope sleeping duck flocks: the long neck and pointed stern stand out above resting Mallard and give the species away before any plumage detail shows.

Conservation status

As a breeder in western Europe it is rare and vulnerable to drainage and nest predation in grassland. As a winter visitor it remains numerous, though milder winters are shifting the centre of gravity north-east. Loss of shallow, extensively managed wetlands and hunting in parts of the wintering range remain the main pressures.