Pintails: Graceful Globetrotters

When the conversation has turned to ducks here (a favorite topic for this birdwatcher), the species I’ve talked about have invariably been oceangoing divers – birds that gather here in winter to ride out the cold months snacking on mussels and crabs in the rough surf of our inlets.

But the harlequins, scoters and eiders are now flying north for the arctic summer, and we can take a look at some of our other avian neighbors who are settling in for a new season.

One of the earliest nesters on the Shore is the northern pintail, which is now beginning to breed in our wetlands.

What it is: The pintail is a dabbling duck, which means it forages near the surface of the water – as opposed to birds like longtails and loons, which can dive hundreds of feet through ocean currents to get to food.

Like mallards and other dabblers, you’ll often see pintails “up-ending” in shallow water, their tails and feet in the air as they stretch their necks under water and dig through the muck for seeds.

Pintails are beautiful birds, large and slender, with long, graceful necks.

The male has a deep brown head with a white “pinafore” on his neck and a white underside. His body is an attractive gray, streaked with black flight feathers, and he has long, pointed tail feathers that give him his name. I’ve always thought the male ducks look like they’ve been carefully outfitted in very expensive suits.

Females are pretty, too, with buff-colored heads and speckled brown feathering. One of the species’ most distinguishing characteristics is shared by both sexes: a pale blue bill.

Where to find it: Pintails are world-traveling ducks. The species can be found across northern Europe and Asia and much of North America, and apparently has no problem hopping from continent to continent; birds tagged in Japan have turned up in the eastern U.S.

New Jersey’s stretches of protected, unforested wetland offer a safe haven for the species, which flocks to the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge’s Ocean and Atlantic County acreage. Drive the loop at Forsythe’s Brigantine division and you should see pintails in large numbers at this time of year. Cape May’s wetland areas are also a great place to spot them.

Why bother: The pintail is an undeniably beautiful bird – it looks like it was dreamed up by an expert decoy carver who wanted to create a particularly pretty specimen to paint.

It could also be considered a bird in trouble. The pintail’s wide-ranging habits mean scientists haven’t had the easiest time tracking its population trends. It has a huge range and is quite abundant worldwide, but in North America, numbers are falling.

There were an estimated 10 million pintails on our continent in the 1950s, but a 2009 study showed only 3.2 million remain. Susceptibility to some nasty avian diseases is partly to blame, but the pintails’ biggest problem is the destruction of its native habitat, due to development and climate change.