Northern Shoveler - Ottawa 2025
Chasing Lifers
Chasing Lifers is a new blog series where I’ll write about my personal experiences seeing and capturing photos of species for the first time.
Northern Shoveler - Sony a6700 & Sigma 150-600
Focal Length 277mm // 1/1250 sec // f8.0 // ISO 500
Usually only found in Ottawa during their migration in the Spring and Fall, this Northern Shoveler has decided to stick around this year and brave the winter. It’s been hanging out with a group of mallards in a small piece of open, flowing water in Nepean Creek and has become somewhat of a local celebrity. Having never seen a Northern Shoveler before, I decided to make the trip over to see if I could check this species off my list.
Northern Shoveler - Sony a6700 & Sigma 150-600
Focal Length 258mm (Cropped) // 1/1250 sec // f8.0 // ISO 640
Being unfamiliar with Nepean Creek, it took me about an hour of searching for any signs of life and open water, trudging through nearly waste deep snow in some places, before managing to catch a glimpse of a group of mallards in a small patch of open water tucked away in the creek valley. I found a spot on the creek side to settle down and set up my camera with a good view of all the ducks.
Within seconds I spotted one unusual looking duck, similar in colour to the female mallards but with a smaller body and massive beak. This was the Northern Shoveler I had heard about and I was so excited to see it in person. When I arrived, the Shoveler was resting and floating, with its eyes slowly opening and closing, over near the culvert where flowing water was coming into the creek. Even though it was about -17 degrees Celsius, I was bundled up and comfortable on the bank of the creek observing this duck and started taking photos.
After waiting for about half an hour, I was thrilled to see the Shoveler start to swim out of the group of mallards, away from the culvert, and over to feed in the open creek water that was only a few meters away from me. I sat and enjoyed taking photos and videos of it for a few minutes while it scavenged around me before going back to its resting place.
This ended up being a successful day out! It wasn’t until I got home that I realized from my photos the comb-like projections under its uniquely shaped beak that act as filters for sorting out tiny crustaceans and seeds in the water for it to eat (see zoomed photo below). In the video above you can also see it filtering through the water, using its large beak as a filter.
Notice the comb-like projections under the Northern Shoveler’s beak that help it filter out tiny crustaceans and seeds for food.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to check out the slideshow below for some additional photos from the encounter.
