Hi Tweeters,

Re Burt's query about spinning shovelers:

For years, I've seen groups of paired and non-paired feeding shovelers both
in and out of the breeding season do this so frequently that I thought it
as unremarkable as Mallards tipping on end to bottom-feed--just something
cool to point out to beginners; a phalarope-like vortex-generating feeding
technique to stir up and concentrate the floating yuck on which they feed.
Guess it's like diving Mallards; something that happens fairly frequently
but just isn't written up for some reason. Come to that, I've seen them do
this only on freshwater.

As far as I've been able to observe, they're the only ducks to do it,
though I've sometimes seen groups of Green-winged Teal milling around in a
suspiciously similar manner when they're in shallow water.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net