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Green-winged Teal — Part 2
Images coming soon.
The selfish, dandified drakes, that have spent their summer putting on an extra suit of handsome feathers and living an idle life of pleasure while their mates attended to all the nursery duties, leave them to find their way south as best they may, while they pursue a separate course. In the spring the teals are, perhaps, the easiest ducks to decoy. To watch the gallantries and antics of the drake in the spring, when he proudly swims round and round his coy little sweetheart, uttering his soft whistle of endearment, no one would accuse him of total indifference to her later. Happily, she is self reliant, dutiful to her young, courageous, resourceful. As a brood may consist of from six to sixteen ducklings, the mother does not lack company during the autumn migration, though she must often pay heavy toll to the gunners in every state she passes through. Were she not among the most prolific of birds, doubtless the species would be extinct to-day. Happily this duck is a mark for experts only; for, with a spring from the water, it is at once launched in the air on a flight so rapid that few sportsmen reckon it correctly in taking aim. When wounded, the teal plunges below the water, or when pursued by a hawk; but it rarely, if ever, dives for food, the "tipping-up" process of securing roots of water plants in shallow waters answering the purpose. Occasionally one sees a flock of teals sunning themselves on sandy flats and bogs, preening their feathers, or dozing in the heat of noon; then the hunter picks them off by the dozen at a time; but ordinarily these birds keep well screened in the grasses at the edges of the waters until twilight. While, like most other ducks, they are particularly active toward night and at dawn, they are not so shy as many. Farmers often see them picking up corn thrown about the barnyard; and Mr. Arnold tells in the "Nidologist" of finding nests of the green-winged teals built in tufts of grass on the sun baked banks along the railroad tracks in Manitoba, where the workmen constantly passed the brooding females intent only on keeping warm their large nestful of creamwhite eggs. Nests have been found elsewhere, quite a distance from water, which would seem scarcely intelligent were not the teals very good walkers from the first, and less dependent than others on the food water supplies. In the west one sometimes surprises a brood and its devoted little mother poking about in the undergrowth for acorns, or for grapes, corn, wheat, and oats that lie about the cultivated lands at harvest time. Greenwings are early nesters, and have full fledged young in July, when the blue-wings and cinnamon teal are still sitting.