Blue-Winged Teal

Blue-Winged Teal (Anas Discors) are ducks of interior North America and they are named for the large, baby-blue patches that highlight the upper wings of both sexes. They nest in salt and brackish tidal marshes along the northern Atlantic seaboard. Birds may winter on brackish or saline waters and in tropical mangrove habitats. They regularly perch on boulders, stumps, thick tree limbs or roots overhanging water. Blue-Winged Teal (Anas Discors) fraternize with other waterfowl especially with African Black Ducks (Anas Sparsa) which may serve as sentinels. They withdraw south of the breeding grounds in autumn and their summer and winter ranges overlap only in Louisiana and North Carolina. All but about five percent of the population migrates to Central and South America, frequently as far south and northern Argentina and Chile. The Blue-Winged Teal (Anas Discors) nests are usually located along the edges of prairie potholes, sloughs or marshes as well as moist meadows and boreal forests. Females may rear ducklings on stock ponds adjacent to farm buildings, and undertake their flightless molt about the time progeny fledge, and the southbound passage commonly begins as early as August. Blue-winged Teal (Anas Discors) 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 duckweed, Widgeongrass, and muskgrass. The seeds of plants that grow on mud flats, such as nutgrass, smartweed, millet, and Rice Cut-grass, are avidly consumed by this duck. One-fourth of the food consumed by Blue-winged Teal (Anas Discors) is animal matter such as mollusks, crustaceans, and insects.