Yellow-billed Pintail

Description: The head and neck are a pale warm brown, with the finely mottled darker, throat and foreneck paler and almost unmarked. Almost all of the body plumage is a buffish-brown, with conspicuous blackish-brown feather centers, more spotted on breast and more conspicuous along flanks and upperparts. The center of the belly is paler and almost unmarked. The tail is brownish, long and pointed. The upperwing is grayish-brown, with buff tips to greater coverts; secondaries blackish-green, with broad buff tips. The underwing is grayish-brown, with a paler trailing edge to secondaries. The call is a mellow trilled whistle. The sexes are similar, but the female is a littler duller and less strongly marked on underparts; secondaries are a duller, blackish-brown. Vocalization is a low "ka-ack" or "qua-ack."


Breeding: The yellow-billed pintail lives in a variety of wetlands, from high-elevation lakes and marshes to lowland lakes and rivers in open country. Pair-bonds are perhaps long-term and males assist with tending broods. Species is possibly double-brooded in Chile and the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands. Nests are made on the ground, lined with down and Chile grass, and usually hidden among vegetation and close to water. They may lay between 4 to 10 eggs.

Migrating and Wintering:Yellow-billed pintails are endemic to South America and nearby subantarctic islands. They are widespread and common throughout the south, extending north in the lowlands to southern Peru, Paraguay and southeastern Brazil, and in the Andes to Ecuador (Scott and Carbonell, 1986).

Population: A. g. georgica (South Georgia Island) <10,000; A. g. niceforei (Central Colombia) extinct; A. g. spinicauda (Southern Neotropics) 100,000-1,000,000 (Rose and Scott, 1994).

Food habits: They feed by dabbling and up-ending, wading in shallow water or grazing in waterside grasslands, and sometimes by diving.