All species › Waterfowl › Ducks, swans and geese › Northern Pintail
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › Fowl Galloanserae
Northern Pintail | Anas acuta
Pijlstaart | Ánade rabudo
The Northern Pintail is the slimmest dabbling duck, with a long neck and, in the male, a needle-like tail. In the guide area it is a winter visitor from North America and in northern Mexico and on the plateau one of the most numerous ducks, wintering on saline lakes and lagoons in flocks of thousands. It becomes scarcer to the south.
Voice
The male gives a soft, fluty whistle, proop-proop; the female a low, hoarse quack and a hoarse kwarr when flushed. Little is heard in winter.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
51–66 cm; the male adds elongated central tail feathers of up to about 10 cm. The male has a chocolate-brown head, a white breast and foreneck with a white stripe running up the side of the neck, a grey, finely vermiculated body, a black rear end with a cream patch in front of it and a long, black, pointed tail. The female is finely mottled greyish-brown, with a plain paler head, a long neck and a pointed tail. The bill is long and blue-grey with a black central stripe. In flight slender, with narrow wings, a bronze-green or brown speculum with a white trailing edge and a long neck.
Confusion species
Female Mallard Anas platyrhynchos and Mexican Duck Anas diazi are stockier, with an orange or yellowish bill and a blue speculum with white borders. The female Gadwall Mareca strepera has a shorter neck, a bill with orange sides and a white wing patch. The female American Wigeon Mareca americana has a shorter neck, a short bill and warm orange-brown flanks.
Habitat
Shallow fresh, brackish and saline lakes, the saline and soda lakes of the plateau, coastal lagoons, salt pans, flooded grassland and rice fields. With its long neck it dabbles deeper than other dabbling ducks and eats seeds, aquatic plants and small invertebrates. By day it often rests in flocks on open water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Winters throughout northern and central Mexico, with large numbers in Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango and on the lakes of the central plateau, and further in Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Jalisco, Michoacán and Guerrero. Scarcer in southern Mexico and Central America, south to Panama. Breeds in northern North America, Europe and Asia.
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
On the saline lakes and lagoons of the plateau and in the coastal lagoons of Sinaloa and Sonora, usually among American Wigeon, Northern Shoveler and teal; the long, slim silhouette picks it out even at a distance.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. The North American population has declined sharply since the 1970s through the ploughing of prairie wetlands on the breeding grounds and has not recovered since. In Mexico the species is hunted, and the loss of shallow lakes on the plateau reduces the number of wintering sites.
Scientific name
Anas acuta | Linnaeus, 1758
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Anas in that same work. Anas is the Latin word for 'duck'. acuta is Latin for 'pointed', from acuere 'to sharpen', after the long pointed tail feathers of the male. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.