The American wigeon (Mareca americana), also known as the baldpate, is a species of dabbling duck found in North America.

The American wigeon was formally described in 1789 by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

In silhouette, the wigeon can be distinguished from other dabblers by its round head, short neck, and small bill.

[11] The breeding male (drake) is a striking bird with a mask of green feathers around its eyes and a cream-colored cap running from the crown of his head to his bill.

Both sexes have a pale blue bill with a black tip, a white belly, and gray legs and feet.

It is common and widespread, breeding in all but the extreme north of Canada and Alaska and also in the Interior West through Idaho, Colorado, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, as well as eastern Washington and Oregon.

[1] The majority of the population breeds on wetlands in the Boreal Forest and subarctic river deltas of Canada and Alaska.

[16] It is a rare but regular vagrant to western Europe,[11] and has been observed in significant numbers in Great Britain and Ireland since at least 1958.

In recent decades, wigeon numbers have declined in the Prairie Pothole Region of Canada and increased in the interior and west coast of Alaska.

[10] The American wigeon is a bird of open wetlands, such as wet grassland or marshes with some taller vegetation, and usually feeds by dabbling for plant food or grazing, which it does very readily.

Wigeons also commonly feed on dry land, eating waste grain in harvested fields and grazing on pasture grasses, winter wheat, clover, and lettuce.

Having a largely vegetarian diet, most wigeons migrate in the fall well before northern marshes begin to freeze.