This species breeds in a a wide variety of habitats, and occurs in small freshwater lakes, pools, slow-flowing rivers and shallow marshes with abundant fringe vegetation, favouring eutrophic waters with dense herbaceous cover surrounding edge of water. 
Its stopover and wintering sites include shallow inland wetlands, such as flooded open-marsh areas, riparian areas of sloughs and river backwaters, and dead-tree habitats in forested wetlands, brackish wetlands and reservoirs, coastal marshes, including saltmarshes, and large estuaries, but continues to favour shallow, sheltered waters, typically with heavy vegetation and muddy bottoms (Billerman et al. 2020).

Migration usually occurs at night, in large groups. In spring, migration starts from the wintering sites in mid-January / late February, but mostly occurs in March and April. In the autumn, migration starts in July, but mostly occurs in October and November. Migration occurs mainly from Iceland move to Britain and Ireland, and from northern mainland Europe to countries around the North Sea, with some individuals moving further south to Iberia and north Africa depending on the weather conditions. In eastern Europe, the species moves down to Greece and turkey, whereas in western and southern Europe, the species is mainly resident. The species can migrate in Africa as far south as the equator (Billerman et al. 2020).
This species feeds mainly in shallow water, near shorelines, and on mudflats, as well as agricultural areas during the winter. It is considered to be an opportunistic forager, with its diet comprises the seeds of sedges, grasses, and aquatic vegetation as well as aquatic invertebrates and larvae (such as chironomid midges, Nematoda, Ostracoda, and harpacticoid copepods, molluscs, crustaceans, etc.). It feeds by dabbling, filtering mud, head dipping and upending and very rarely dives (Billerman et al. 2020).

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.

This species breeds in many countries in Europe, mainly in Russia, and also notably in Finland and Sweden.
In winter, the species occurs mainly in the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, but also notably in Azerbaijan, France, Greece and Turkey.

The effects of conservation actions on this species tend to come indirectly from the protection of habitats for other species (Billerman et al. 2020). This species is listed on Annex II of the EU Birds Directive.