Pato Havelda

Identificación

Adults have white underparts, though the rest of the plumage goes through a complex moulting process. The male has a long pointed tail (10 to 15 cm (3.9 to 5.9 in) long) and a dark grey bill crossed by a pink band. In winter, the male has a dark cheek patch on a mainly white head and neck, a dark breast and mostly white body. In summer, the male is dark on the head, neck and back with a white cheek patch. The female has a brown back and a relatively short pointed tail. In winter, the female's head and neck are white with a dark crown. In summer, the head is dark. Juveniles resemble adult females in autumn plumage, though with a lighter, less distinct cheek patch.<p>The males are vocal and have a musical yodelling call ow, ow, owal-ow.

Taxonomía

The long-tailed duck was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other ducks in the genus Anas and coined the binomial name Anas hyemalis. Linnaeus cited the English naturalist George Edwards's description and illustration of the "Long-tailed duck from Hudson's-Bay" that had been published in 1750 in the third volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds.<p>This duck is now the only species placed in the genus Clangula; the genus was introduced in 1819 by the English zoologist William Leach to accommodate the long-tailed duck, in an appendix on species to John Ross's account of his voyage to look for the Northwest Passage. The genus name Clangula is a diminutive of the Latin clangere, meaning "to resound". The specific epithet hyemalis, also Latin, means "of winter". The species is considered to be monotypic – no subspecies are recognised.<p>In North American English it is sometimes called oldsquaw, though this name has fallen out of favour. In 2000, the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) formally adopted the name long-tailed duck, in response to petitioning by a group of biologists who feared that the former name would be offensive to Native American tribes whose help was required for conservation efforts. The AOU stated that "political correctness" alone was not sufficient to justify changing a long-standing name, but in this case decided to make the change because doing so would "conform with English usage in other parts of the world".<p>An undescribed congener is known from the Middle Miocene Sajóvölgyi Formation (Late Badenian, 13–12 Mya) of Mátraszőlős, Hungary.

Nombre científico

Clangula hyemalis

Autoridad

(Linnaeus, 1758)

Orden

Anseriformes

Familia

Anátidos

Género

Clangula

Distribución y hábitat

Long-tailed ducks breed on tundra across northern Eurasia (in Russian Siberia, Kamchatka, and Karelia, for example), the Faroe Islands, Finland, parts of southern Greenland, Iceland, Norway, as well as across northern North America (Alaska and northern Canada).<p>In winter, they are found on and near large bodies of seawater, such as the Northern Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, Hudson Bay and the American Great Lakes.

Área de cría

NA, PAL : coastal Greenland, Iceland, n Fennoscandia and Arctic archs., n Russia and Siberia to Chukotka Pen., Alaska and n Canada

Área no reproductiva

to n Japan, Aleutian Is. to sw Canada in North Pacific; to wc, ec North Atlantic

Migración

Migrantes completos

Comportamiento

Patrón migratorio: Migrantes completos.

Conservación

Tendencia poblacional: en declive.

Tendencia poblacional

en declive