Here’s another favorite wintertime visitor to North Carolina, the Northern Pintail. I was pleased to get a nice look at this handsome drake a couple of weeks ago while birding in the OBX. This species is rather skittish and usually takes off once people are detected along the shoreline so it was cool to actually view this bird up close!
Pintails are unique looking birds and IMO are among the most visually striking ducks one can see here in the Tarheel State.The drakes are easy to identify when swimming amongst large mixed flocks with their chestnut colored heads and namesake pointy tails.The Northern Pintail boasts the widest range of any other duck seen in the United States. They are found on every continent except Antarctica, and are known to winter and breed on all continents except for Australia and Antarctica. During the wintertime, large flocks of Pintail can be seen at many of our coastal refuge regions here in North Carolina, such asBodie and Pea islands in the Outer Banks,Lake Mattamuskeet, Pungo Lake, the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, and parts of Pamlico Sound.
A surface feeding duck, they dine on aquatic plants, seeds, grass, small aquatic animals, and insects. Their long elegant necks enable them to reach deeper than other dabbling ducks for seeds, roots and tubers of underwater plants. During the wintertime, they’re also commonly spotted in eastern North Carolina feeding on the leftover grains found open farm fields situated near water.They will stick around here until late April and will return next September once more to spend the winter in eastern NC.Aren’t they lovely?
