Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Beautiful Blue-Winged Teal

By: Tom Berg

Of the many species of ducks in the USA, the blue-winged teal is one of the favorites of many people. They are quite beautiful and the males are very distinctive-looking. Males have heavily speckled flanks and chest, and their head is dark gray with a broad white stripe between their eye and their jet-black bill. Their wings are fairly dark, with green secondaries and a large light blue shoulder patch that can easily be seen in flight.

Females are much more bland-looking, with dappled brown feathers overall. The top of their head is slightly darker, with a darker eye-stripe and a black bill like the male. They also have a large light blue shoulder patch, and besides being visible in flight the blue color can sometimes be seen while they are at rest.

The blue-winged teal is a dabbling duck like the more common mallard duck, but the teal is much smaller. The blue-winged teal is a long-distance migrant, too, often traveling from breeding grounds in Canada all the way down to South America. They are strong flyers, frequently covering this vast distance in four weeks or less. They are one of the first ducks to fly south in the fall and one of the last duck species to head north in the springtime.

Blue-winged teal prefer quiet lakes, ponds and marshes, where they spend their time searching for and eating a variety of submerged aquatic vegetation. They also eat seeds like wild rice and an assortment of other small seeds. Snails, midges and crayfish are also a part of their diet. Since they are dabbling ducks, they typically do not dive, they just dunk their head underwater with their tail feathers sticking straight up to grab tasty morsels off the bottom.

Breeding takes place throughout much of the northern and central United States, and west through the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and others. They also breed throughout the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Southern areas of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec also contain teal breeding grounds, and some of these ducks fly as far north as Alaska and the Yukon Territory to lay their eggs.

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