Blue-winged Teal

Blue-winged Teal exhibit distinctive dabbling behavior for feeding, rarely diving but often submerging their heads or upending in the water. Their social interactions feature elaborate courtship displays, such as male head pumping and rapid head dipping, often leading to mate selection. Blue-winged Teal's courtship can involve multiple males vying for a single female until she chooses. Interestingly, pair bonds dissolve during incubation and new bonds form in winter or spring. Unique among ducks, blue-winged Teal less frequently partake in forced copulations outside of their mating pair.

The range is all of North America except western and northern Alaska, northern Yukon Territory, northern Northwest Territories and the northeastern area of Canada. Blue-winged teal are rare in the desert southwest, and the west coast. The breeding habitat of the blue-winged teal is marshes and ponds. The breeding range extends from east-central Alaska and southern Mackenzie District east to southern Quebec and southwestern Newfoundland. In the contiguous United States it breeds from northeast California east to central Louisiana, central Tennessee, and the Atlantic Coast. The western blue-winged teal inhabits that part of the breeding range west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic blue-winged teal nests along the Atlantic Coast from New Brunswick to Pea Island, North Carolina. They migrate in flocks to winter in to the south of its breeding range. During migration, some birds may fly long distances over open ocean. They are occasional vagrants to Europe, where their yellow legs are a distinction from other small ducks like the common teal and garganey, and in recent years have been annual vagrants in Britain and Ireland. The blue-winged teal winters from southern California to western and southern Texas, the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Coast, the Caribbean, and south to Central and South America. It is often seen wintering as far south as Brazil and central Chile.