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The Shoveller.
(Spatula clypeata.)
This duck is a lover of reedy-ponds and swamps, grubbing to and fro in the shallows in a quiet business-like way, intent on swallowing anything it can find in the nature of insects, tadpoles, worms and larvae. The shovel-shaped bill seems expressly designed to scoop up and sift food of this type from the reedy ooze. It is furnished with a wonderful sieve, consisting of a large number of long thin plates set so close together on each side of both jaws that they look like very fine combs. The Shoveller is a bird of the temperate zone, migrating as far south as Borneo and Panama.