Blue-winged Teal

Description:

The blue-winged teal is a small dabbling duck from North America. The Blue-winged Teal is 40 cm (16 in) long, with a wingspan of 58 cm (23 in), and a weight of 370 g (13 oz). The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs.

Habitat:

This flock was photographed at Phinizy Swamp Nature Park in Richmond County (Augusta), GA. The range is all of North America except western and northern Alaska, northern Yukon Territory, northern Northwest Territory, northeastern Canada. Blue-winged Teal are rare in the desert southwest, and the west coast. Blue-winged Teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation. The breeding habitat of the Blue winged Teal is marshes and ponds.

Notes:

The call of the male is a short whistle; the female's call is a soft quack. Blue-winged Teal are surface feeders and prefer to feed on mud flats, in fields, or in shallow water where there is floating and shallowly submerged vegetation plus abundant small aquatic animal life. They mostly eat vegetative matter consisting of seeds or stems and leaves of sedge, grass, pondweed, smartweed (Polygonum spp.), duckweed (Lemna spp.), Widgeongrass, and muskgrass (Chara spp.).