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Cape Shoveler | Spatula smithii
Kaapse slobeend | Cuchara del Cabo
The Cape Shoveler is a near-endemic duck of southern Africa: a darkly speckled dabbler with the characteristic spoon-shaped bill with which it sieves plankton and small invertebrates from the water surface. It is the only shoveler that commonly breeds here.
Voice
Fairly quiet. The male gives a hoarse rasping rrap-rrap, the female a series of loud descending quacks, quack-quack-quack, mainly when disturbed and in display.
Recording: African Bioacoustics Community — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
51–53 cm. The male is grey-brown finely spotted dark all over, with a paler speckled grey head, a yellow eye, a large black spatulate bill and bright orange legs. The female is darker and browner, with a dark eye and duller legs. In flight the male shows a pale blue forewing, a white bar and a green speculum; in the female these colours are subdued. It swims low at the front, so that the heavy bill stays close to the water.
Confusion species
The female and eclipse male Northern Shoveler Spatula clypeata, a rare visitor here, are paler and warmer brown, with orange cutting edges to the bill and a paler tail. Yellow-Billed Duck Anas undulata and African Black Duck Anas sparsa have ordinary bills. Red-Billed Teal Anas erythrorhyncha and Cape Teal Anas capensis are paler and smaller, with narrower bills.
Habitat
Shallow, nutrient-rich water: sewage ponds, brackish and saline pans, coastal lagoons and vleis, farm dams and saltworks. It sieves the surface while swimming, often in small groups that circle one behind another to stir up food. Food consists of zooplankton, aquatic insects, crustaceans and seeds. The nest is in dense grass, usually not far from water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Almost confined to the region: most numerous in the Western Cape and on the South African highveld, also in the Eastern and Northern Cape, Lesotho and Eswatini, in Namibia mainly in the centre and on the coast at Walvis Bay, and in Botswana on the Makgadikgadi pans; scarce in Zimbabwe and a vagrant to Angola, Zambia and Mozambique. Hardly any records beyond the region.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Sewage works are by far the best places: the birds swim there, often in pairs, close to the embankments. Watch for groups ploughing through the water with their bills and spinning in circles. The male's yellow eye and orange legs show best on a landing bird.
Conservation status
Not threatened; the species has benefited greatly from the construction of sewage ponds and dams. Its small range makes it sensitive to local wetland loss and to botulism in nutrient-rich water at high temperatures.
Scientific name
Spatula smithii | Hartert, 1891
Hartert described the species in 1891 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Spatula was introduced in 1822 by Boie. Spatula is Latin for 'spoon' or 'spatula', after the broad, spoon-shaped bill of the shoveler. smithii honours the Scottish army surgeon and zoologist Andrew Smith (1797–1872), who described many South African species. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape Province.