Crossword-Solution: SHOVELLER 9 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 15

The beak of a shoveller-duck (Spatula clypeata) is a more beautiful and complex structure than the mouth of a whale.

The entire head of the shoveller, though incomparably less bulky, is about one-eighteenth of the length of the head of a moderately large Balænoptera rostrata, in which species the baleen is only nine inches long; so that if we were to make the head of the shoveller as long as that of the Balænoptera, the lamellæ would be six inches in length, that is, two-thirds of the length of the baleen in this species of whale.

The lower mandible of the shoveller-duck is furnished with lamellæ of equal length with these above, but finer; and in being thus furnished it differs conspicuously from the lower jaw of a whale, which is destitute of baleen.

Although the beak is thus very inferior as a sifter to that of a shoveller, yet this bird, as every one knows, constantly uses it for this purpose.

There were two pintails, one of which was the most abundant species in the country; also a widgeon, a lake duck, a shoveller duck, with red plumage, grey head and neck, and blue wings; and two species of the long-legged whistling or tree duck.