The Urban Pantheist

Photo by urbpan. Location: Leverett Pond, Olmsted Park, Boston.

Urban species #346: Northern shoveler Anas clypeata

When we see northern shovelers in Boston, they're just passing through. They can be found throughout the northern hemisphere; in North America they breed in Alaska, western Canada and some of the western states. They winter along the southern parts of each coast, throughout Mexico, with some individuals migrating all the way to Colombia. Their population in North America is thought to be increasing, due to the protection of wetland areas. The three times I have seen shovelers in Boston they were stopping for a few days or less, resting in the Fenway or in Leverett Pond. Shovelers have a distinctive, almost comical bill, for which they are named. They sweep it through water and mud, filtering out the seeds of grasses and aquatic plants, as well as aquatic snails and other invertebrates. They are attracted to flocks of other ducks, because the actions of swimming ducks churn up food particles from the sediment. Shovelers are tolerant of many different water quality conditions and are commonly seen in urban areas in California, the Great Lakes and the south.