Northern Pintail

The Northern Pintail is a slim, elegant dabbling duck with a long neck and pointed tail. Breeding males have a chocolate-brown head, white breast and a white stripe rising up each side of the neck, plus elongated central tail feathers. Females are finely mottled brown with a more modest pointed tail. Both sexes show long, narrow wings and a graceful profile in fast flight (Wikipedia, general species account).

Pintails use shallow lakes, marshes, flooded fields and estuaries, feeding by dabbling and upending for seeds, aquatic vegetation and invertebrates. They usually nest on the ground in open country near water, where the female incubates and tends the young. The species is strongly migratory across much of its broad northern range and forms sizeable flocks on Japanese wetlands during the non-breeding season (Wikipedia, general species account).