Garganey

How to identify

Field marks

1. Male has a broad white crescent-shaped supercilium above the eye
2. Male has a rufous head and breast, with most of the rest gray
3. Male shows pale blue on the upperwing in flight
4. Male shows white feather edges on the tertials when swimming

Male, female and young

Male has a rufous head and breast with a broad white stripe above the eye; female rufous-brown.

Voice

Male has a distinctive crackling courtship call; female is relatively quiet for a female duck, but can give a faint “quack”.

Similar species

Eurasian Teal

Females very similar and require careful separation; female Garganey has more distinct facial markings and shakes its head more often when foraging.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: April · Most records: India, China, United Kingdom

Garganey has been recorded at 2,058 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 130 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Changaram Wetlands – EzhupunnaIndia2,520 records
2. Saul Kere / Sowl KereIndia2,180 records
3. Bharatpur – Keoladeo Ghana NPIndia1,874 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IndiaChinaUnited KingdomSpainIsraelGermanyPolandCzechia

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The garganey (Spatula querquedula) is a small dabbling duck. It breeds in much of Europe and across the Palearctic, but is strictly migratory, with the entire population moving to Africa, India (in particular Santragachi), Bangladesh (in the natural reservoirs of Sylhet district) and Australasia during the winter of the Northern hemisphere, where large flocks can occur. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

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