Shelduck call: Peter Boesman, Xeno-canto
Shelduck
Shelduck
What am I?
I am a duck.
Where do I come from?
Many of us spend the whole year on the UK coastline and breed in northern parts of England in the summer. Some of us travel to the Solent in the winter from other parts of Europe, we come for the great mudflats and saltmarshes, or as we call them, restaurants!
A bit about me
I am really quite attractive as ducks go, I have lots of bright colours when you see me up close. I spend my time in muddy areas and get down and dirty looking for food. My favourite dish would be hydrobia, they are tiny snails which I sieve out of mud and sand with my bright red beak, delicious! Speaking of mud, did you know, I sometimes nest underground in old rabbit burrows. Why would I dig my own if I can reuse and recycle right?
Conservation status
I’m a qualifying feature for the Chichester and Langstone Harbours Special Protection Area – that means, when the site was designated, a nationally significant number of us used these awesome coastlines in the winter!
Fun fact
We are famously seen in huge flocks, up to 100,000, along the northern coast of Germany during late summer and autumn. We go here to shed our feathers and grow some shiny new ones, for four weeks or so we are totally unable to fly.
