A duck with a broad, shovel-shaped bill. The large bill gathers tiny food items from the water.
Breeding males have green heads, white chests and chestnut underparts. Females are mottled brown but share the same broad bill shape.
Northern shovelers wintering at Lake Teganuma, Chiba, ate tiny aquatic animals and attached algae. Their stomach contents included cyclopoid copepods and fragments, filamentous green algae, rotifers and diatoms. Microscopic organisms formed part of the meals gathered during surface feeding.
A report published in 1992 examined seven birds caught in March. Six captured at night had been feeding around fishing nets within 100 metres of shore in water about 0.6–1 metre deep. All six contained cyclopoid copepods, and four birds contained attached filamentous green algae. The author interpreted the contents and feeding locations as evidence of use of surface-water plankton and algae on fishing nets.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Nevada’s wildlife department lists drought, habitat loss and water diversion as threats to northern shovelers. Breeding birds favour shallow, well-vegetated wetlands; outside breeding they also use lakes, wetlands and agricultural ponds. Retaining shallow waters and their water supply is therefore a conservation priority in this regional context.