Blue-winged Teal

Spatula discors

Travels farther than any other North American duck. Your message catches a ride to Peru.

Population: ~7.8 million mature individuals (BirdLife/IUCN assessment), increasing trend
Habitat: Shallow freshwater marshes, ponds, and prairie potholes with dense emergent vegetation (bulrushes, cattails, sedges); also brackish/saltwater marshes, coastal lagoons, and mangrove-fringed estuaries in winter
Fun fact: Blue-winged Teal are among the earliest fall migrants and latest spring arrivals of North American ducks, wintering as far south as northern South America; the oldest banding-recovered individual was a male at least 23 years 3 months old, banded in Saskatchewan and recovered in Cuba.
Range: Breeds across North America from southern Alaska and the prairie pothole region east to Nova Scotia, south to northern Texas; winters along the Gulf and southern Atlantic/Pacific coasts, the Caribbean, and Central and northern South America (vagrant to Europe and Africa)
Diet: Omnivorous: mostly plant matter (seeds, stems, and leaves of sedges, grasses, pondweed, smartweed, duckweed, rice, millet) with roughly a quarter of the diet made up of aquatic invertebrates (midge larvae, mollusks, crustaceans, insects); laying females shift to mostly protein-rich animal matter
Size: 0.4 m
Wingspan: 0.58 m
Lifespan: 23 years

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