A short-billed duck that feeds on plants both in water and on land. Breeding males have a chestnut head and pale forehead.
Breeding males have a cream forehead, while females have brownish heads and bodies. Males in eclipse plumage resemble females.
Eurasian wigeons alter their pecking pace with grass height. In a captive experiment in Scotland, peck rates peaked on grass three centimetres high. Rates declined on taller grass and also on swards 2.5 centimetres or shorter, linking feeding movements to the condition of vegetation underfoot.
The 1998 paper described an April–May 1981 experiment at Caerlaverock reserve using ten captive-bred first-year birds. Pecking rates were recorded over 17 days as grazing progressively reduced grass height inside an enclosure. A separate autumn 1982 experiment compared wild birds on alternating fertilized and untreated grass strips. On fertilized strips, birds walked more slowly and pecked faster, concentrating their grazing within those patches.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Conserving feeding habitat for Eurasian wigeons involves both food quality and conditions in which birds can feed quietly. Observations at Chetney Marshes, England, from November 1978 to May 1979 found wigeons usually feeding away from roads and banks. On quieter weekends they also used nutritious grassland near the road. The authors of the 1980 paper identified disturbance and grassland nutritional value as two factors shaping the availability and use of feeding areas.