The Northern Pintail is a slender dabbling duck notable for the male’s chocolate-brown head, white breast stripe, and elongated central tail feathers, while the female is more mottled brown with a shorter pointed tail. In Arizona, pintails are principally seasonal visitors, arriving in autumn to spend the winter in shallow wetlands, marshes, lakes, and flooded agricultural fields statewide—particularly along the lower Colorado River corridor and at refuges such as Imperial NWR. They feed by dabbling for seeds, aquatic plants, and small invertebrates in open water and exposed mudflats, often forming large mixed flocks with other waterfowl. Breeding occurs well north of the state, making confirmed nestings in Arizona extremely rare, but their dependable winter presence highlights the critical role of wetland conservation and managed agricultural habitats in this arid landscape.
