February 26, 2024
Living along the Atlantic Flyway, I have always enjoyed photographing the wintering waterfowl that finds their way down to the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The Atlantic Flyway contains all of North America’s Atlantic Coast from Florida to Greenland. Earlier this month, I photographed the American Wigeon. The wigeon is a migrating dabbling duck that is a common migrant in my area during the winter.
I thought I would approach writing this blog post from the different perspective of my field experience photographing the American wigeon. I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to photograph American wigeons many times through the years along the east coast.
Species Information
American wigeon scientific name is Mareca americana. It was formerly assigned to Anas, but it is now classified with other wigeons in the dabbling duck genus of Marcea. This medium-sized duck is also know as “baldplate” and is a new world duck. It is the new world version of the Eurasian wigeon.
This species is a wide-spread small duck in North America. American wigeon ducks are more vocal than others. They are known to be a noisy and gregarious species of duck.
This drake or male has a very high-pitched kind of whistle for his call year round even during courtship or when he feels threatened. The hen or female has a more harsh call which is like a grunt or growl during courtship.
Range
This migratory duck winters farther south than its breeding range. They can be found in the southern half of the United States, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and the Mid-Atlantic region. The American wigeons wintering range goes even further south into Central America, the Caribbean and into northwestern South America.
During the breeding season, the American Wigeon breeding grounds are from Alaska, Canada, and into Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. American wigeon hens will nest on the dry ground. However, the wigeons’ nest will most likely be in a field close to water, ponds, marshes and wetlands.
Habitat
The American wigeon habitat includes marshes, rivers, lakes and along the coast. This dabbling duck spends much of its time grazing on land or in open waters. The wintering wigeon will choose shorelines with marshes or grasslands nearby.
Diet
The American wigeon’s diet mainly consists of plants both aquatic and land. When they feed on dry land, they prefer eating waste grain in harvested fields and grazing on pasture grasses, winter wheat, clover, and lettuce. These ducks have a primarily vegetarian diet.
During this breeding season, the American wigeon diet consists mainly of terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates. Other times of the year their diet consists of plant materials, usually leaves and stems for which their pale gray bills are readily adept. American Widgeons often forage in groups of other duck species. They often steal food from other species of ducks, and they forage as food becomes available.
In the Field Notes
I have always found the wigeons to be fun to photograph. If I was a few years younger and healthier, I would be out there in the water with camera and lens photographing these wigeons. However, I am not and had to settle for getting as close to the edge of the water as manageable. I got down as low as possible to the water with my camera and long lens to get the most pleasing looks of these charismatic American wigeon ducks.
With my bird photography, I always use a a shallow depth of field so that I can get a blurred or out of focus background. Therefore, the bird will pop in the image. I loved, here on this day, photographing the wigeons. With the sun being out, I was able to get that beautiful blue water.
Also, in my personal opinion, I believe the American wigeon hen or female is one of the prettiest hens or female ducks. As spring migration will be underway soon, these gregarious American wigeons will be heading back north. Wintering waterfowl are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I found this species to be one of the easiest ducks to photograph whether it is from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the Eastern Shore of Maryla
Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts. As I will be sharing a couple more species of ducks that I photographed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland this past month.
Thank you for reading my Field Notes Blog, and I hope you will share this post with others.
Let’s preserve and conserve our natural world.
All the best,
Lori
Copyright © 2024 Lori A Cash Conservation Photography, LLC
Fantastic blog post! Beautiful image of a beautiful duck! Thank you for sharing your work and information!
Thanks so very much, Katy!