Flying Spatula

Saturday-Sunday, October 12-13, 2024

Flying Spatula

Today’s special animal friend is the blue-winged teal, Spatula discors, a species of duck that spends the winter at the charming Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge in Anson County, North Carolina.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge

A small, pretty duck, the blue-winged teal is about 16 inches long with a wingspan of about 23 inches, weighing about 13 ounces.  Both sexes are mainly mottled brown in color, and both have bright blue wing coverts and a green speculum, which is “a patch, often distinctly colored, on the secondary wing feathers.”  Males also have a bluish head with a broad white band in front of the eyes and a black back and tail.  You can’t see the brightly colored patches when they’re sitting.

Cornell U. All About Birds Lab: Blue winged Teal photo gallery

Blue-winged teals’ breeding range, spring through fall, is most of the upper half of the United States and into Canada.  Their winter range includes some coastal areas of the American South, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and northern South America.  Their habitat ranges from coastal marshes to a variety of inland waterways and wetlands.  Marshy areas with abundant vegetation are favored.  They build nests on the ground, usually within a few hundred yards of water, and often in groups.

Blue-winged teal prefer the south.  They are among the last species of migratory ducks to fly north for the breeding season and the first to head back south once the babies are fledged.  Males may bail out of Upnorth by the end of August, while females and juveniles flock south from mid-September to November.

Courtship begins in January or February, before they leave their winter homes.  Pairs get right down to nesting, with 10 to 12 eggs being typical.  Incubation is 21-27 days, during which time the male goes off and molts.  The ducklings are fledged in about 7 weeks. 

This species feeds on land and in shallow water, eating seeds, stems, and other plant parts from duckweed, smartgrass, millet, and many others. They also eat insects, crustaceans, and mollusks. 

Blue-winged teal are a species of Least Concern.  There are hunting seasons in many parts of their winter range.  The green-winged teal, Anas carolinensis, is also found in North Carolina in the winter.  It is similar to the blue-winged teal but has a more northerly range, all the way to the top of Canada in the summer and excluding South America in the winter.