Behavior
These birds feed by dabbling in shallow water at the edge of marshes or open water. They mainly eat plants; their diet may include molluscs and aquatic insects.
Blue-winged Teal are generally the first ducks south in the fall and the last ones north in the spring. Adult drakes depart the breeding grounds well before adult hens and immatures. Most Blue-winged Teal flocks seen after mid-September are composed largely of adult hens and immatures. The northern regions experience a steady decline in Blue-winged Teal populations from early September until early November. Blue-winged Teal in central migration areas tend to remain through September, then diminish rapidly during October, with small numbers remaining until December. Large numbers of Blue-winged Teal appear on wintering grounds in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas in September.
Read more about this topic: Blue-winged Teal
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“School success is not predicted by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read as much as by emotional and social measures; being self-assured and interested: knowing what kind of behavior is expected and how to rein in the impulse to misbehave; being able to wait, to follow directions, and to turn to teachers for help; and expressing needs while getting along with other children.”
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“Children can’t make their own rules and no child is happy without them. The great need of the young is for authority that protects them against the consequences of their own primitive passions and their lack of experience, that provides with guides for everyday behavior and that builds some solid ground they can stand on for the future.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)