Eurasian wigeon (Mareca penelope)

The male wigeon has a rusty brown head with a bright yellow crown. The head feathers can shimmer slightly greenish depending on the light. The chest is slightly pink while the back and sides are finely grey patterned. The males have a white thigh area in front of the black rump. Similar to the common teal, the male wigeon also has a horizontal white stripe over the sides.

During the summer, the male moults into an eclipse plumage. Because this plumage is rather rare to observe in Switzerland, I will not describe this plumage in detail. In general it’s very similar to the female's plumage. The eclipse plumage of the male is a little bit more coloured.

Both males and females are hardly confusable. Compared to other female dabbling ducks, the female is quite easy to identify.

The wigeon breeds on waters in the boreal coniferous forest zone. In winter, it is mainly found on rather shallow shores and in fields near canals or larger bodies of water.

In Switzerland, the wigeon is only present in winter. It spends the summer further north. The winter population in Switzerland is 3'000 to 4'000 individuals large. This number has been rising continuously since the 80s. One reason for this may be the appearance of two newly occurring water plants.

The food of the wigeon consists of water and land plants. These are eaten either by dabbling or grazing on land. The wigeon also likes to steal the water plants that coots have brought to the surface. The wigeon belongs to the dabbling duck family and cannot dive itself.

Like with all ducks, the females of the wigeon take care of the brood alone. The males form flocks among themselves and migrate to moulting places.

The female builds a nest in the dense shore vegetation. She then lays 8 to 9 eggs in this nest. After 24 days the young hatch. Under the guidance of their mother, they leave the nest shortly after hatching and have to look for food themselves. After another 40 to 45 days the young wigeon reach flight ability.

Most wigeons belong to the short-distance migrants. However, some individuals migrate over 6’000 km and are therefore counted among the long-distance migrants. Long-distance migrants are species that migrate further than 4’000 km from their breeding grounds to their wintering grounds.

Like most dabbling ducks (except the mallard), wigeons are rather shy. Photographing the wigeon requires a lot of patience and in most cases some sort of camouflage. The wigeon is quite common especially at Lake Constance and in the Fanel. But because the wigeon avoids the proximity to humans, the duck is a rather difficult species to photograph.