The species shows a preference for open lowland grassland (Snow and Perrins 1998), prairie or tundra habitats (Johnsgard 1978) containing freshwater, brackish and saline wetlands with shallow water to facilitate dabbling (Kear 2005). Wetland habitats include shallow freshwater marshes, small marshy lakes, slow-flowing rivers (Carboneras and Kirwan 2014) and wet meadows (Madge and Burn 1988), especially favouring ponds with low, dense marginal vegetation and wetlands interspersed with brushy thickets or copses (Johnsgard 1978). During the winter it also frequents large inland lakes (Scott and Rose 1996), brackish coastal lagoons, brackish (Madge and Burn 1988) and saline marshes (Steele et al. 1997), shallow fresh or brackish estuaries (Johnsgard 1978, Brown et al. 1982, Snow and Perrins 1998), tidal flats (Madge and Burn 1988) and river deltas (Scott and Rose 1996) with adjacent agricultural land and scattered impoundments (Johnsgard 1978).

It breeds in solitary pairs or loose groups from April to June (Madge and Burn 1988). The nest is a slight hollow on the ground amongst vegetation (Carboneras and Kirwan 2014) and can be close to or more than 1 km away from water (Kear 2005). This species is omnivorous (Carboneras and Kirwan 2014) and opportunistic (Johnsgard 1978), its diet consisting of algae (Brown et al. 1982), seeds (Hockey et al. 2005) and rice (Brown et al. 1982), tubers, and the vegetative parts of aquatic plants, sedges (Carboneras and Kirwan 2014) and grasses (Brown et al. 1982, Hockey et al.2005), as well as aquatic invertebrates, amphibians and small fish. This species is strongly migratory throughout its northern range (Carboneras and Kirwan 2014).

Although the generation length for both EU and Europe regional assessments were calculated using the same methodology, new information arriving after the EU assessments were undertaken gave rise to an update in the generation lengths. This new information was then used for the Europe level assessments giving rise to a difference between the generation lengths used for the EU and Europe regions.

The species has a more northern range than other dabbling ducks and it covers northern and temperate regions across Europe although it avoids Arctic islands. In more southerly countries, its distribution is extremely patchy (Hagemeijer and Blair 1997).
In Europe, is breeds almost entirely in Russia, but also notably in Finland. In winter, it occurs notably in Spain, Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France.

Conservation Actions Underway
CMS Appendix II. EU Birds Directive Annex II and III. An EU management plan for the species was published in 2007. The important sites for the species are protected in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, U.K., Spain, Portugal and Greece (Jensen 2007).

Conservation Actions Proposed
Hunting of this species should be banned during migration and at the end of the breeding season and annual data on bag numbers should be collected for all countries where the species is hunted. Breeding sites should be identified, preserved and managed to increase reproductive success and colonising ability and all internationally important staging and wintering sites should be designated as SPAs and managed favourably. Censusing of winter populations and breeding populations, to provide an assessment of breeding productivity, should be carried out annually. Ringing on breeding and wintering sites should also be carried out and existing ringing data analysed to identify population units and provide annual estimates of mortality (Jensen 2007).