668 Featured Specimen

Gadwall

Mareca strepera

A medium-sized dabbling duck with fine gray-brown patterning, a black rear, and a useful white wing patch.

Range

Habitat range map

Native range Occasional / Transient

Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)

Lives on shallow lakes, marshes, ponds, slow rivers, and brackish coastal waters, favoring calm vegetated shallows.

Males show fine gray patterning, a black rump, and white speculum. Females are brown and resemble small female mallards.

Pairs and small groups swim on open water, joining larger flocks outside breeding. It may take plant fragments brought up by diving ducks.

Aquatic plants, algae, seeds, insects, and mollusks are eaten, with plant material often dominant.

Eggs are laid in grass-hidden ground nests. The female lines the nest with down, and precocial ducklings move to water.

Common across North American and Eurasian wetlands, it depends on shallow water with persistent aquatic vegetation.