Northern Pintail

 The northern pintail is a large duck that is found through out much of the Northern Hemisphere. It is circumpolar and nests in Canada, northern Europe and Asia. They are found primarily in wetland habitats. These birds are migratory and will migrate as far as the Equator during the winter.

The pintail is a dabbling duck. They eat aquatic vegetation that they find by sticking their heads below the water while floating on the surface of the water. There are no subspecies of the northern pintail. However there is a offshoot called the Eaton's pintail that is found on islands in the Indian Ocean. These ducks are considered to be an evolution from the northern pintail and are considered their own species.

Northern Pintail

 

The northern pintail is a northern duck. It is circumpolar meaning that it is found in North America, Asia and Europe. Even though it nests in the northern portions of these continents northern pintails winter in the south, sometimes near the equator. They are a dabbling duck, eating mostly aquatic plant matter which they et by reaching their head under the water while floating on the surface.

Northern Pintail

One of the birds that we had the opportunity to photograph down at the Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico was the northern pintail duck. The northern pintail is one of my favorite species of ducks but we do not get the chance to see them too often in the eastern parts of Minnesota.
They are a circumpolar species breeding in parts of northern Europe, Asia and North America. In the U.S. They typically breed as far east as the western half of Minnesota. Pintails often nest in prairie pothole habitats, prairies near to small often temporary wetlands. Unfortunately the prairie pothole habitats in North America have been shrinking, due to increased farming in the area, which has led to a sharp decline in the number of pintails found in North America. Habitat loss has also forced the pintails, as well as many other waterfowl, to gather with a higher concentration of birds with in a smaller area. This increases the potential of a large numbers of birds dying from an epidemic. This was the case in 1997 when two outbreaks of avian botulism, one in Canada and the other in Utah, killed over 1.5 million waterfowl. Fortunately the world population of pintails is stable and so it is considered at Least Concern status.