Overview
AT A GLANCE
- Common Name: Green-winged Teal
- Scientific Name: Anas crecca
- Category: Birds
- Subcategory: Waterfowl
- Size: 31 to 39 cm (12.2 to 15.4 in) length; 52 to 59 cm (20.5 to 23.2 in) wingspan
- Weight: 250 to 450 g (8.8 to 15.9 oz)
- Lifespan: 6 to 10 years in the wild; maximum recorded banding age exceeds 20 years
- Diet: Omnivorous dabbler; seeds of smartweeds, sedges, and grasses, aquatic plant leaves, midges, water beetles, and mollusks
- Habitat: Very shallow, nutrient-rich freshwater pools, marsh margins, and flooded sedge meadows
- Range: Circumboreal throughout North America and Eurasia; breeds across northern boreal wetlands and winters south to the Gulf of Mexico, Central America, the Mediterranean, and South Asia
- Conservation Status: Least Concern
The Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca) is the smallest, fastest, and most acrobatic dabbling duck in the Northern Hemisphere, belonging to the waterfowl family Anatidae. Renowned for the breeding drake’s dazzling chestnut-red head adorned with a sweeping iridescent emerald-green eye patch, this compact waterfowl is a familiar jewel of boreal marshes, prairie potholes, and coastal estuaries across North America and Eurasia.
Ecologically, Anas crecca is a vital wetland consumer and seed disperser, utilizing its finely combed bill lamellae to sift through the muddy surface margins of very shallow waters for the nutrient-packed seeds of aquatic grasses and sedges. In flight, green-winged teals are legendary for their high-speed, synchronized flock aerobatics, banking and darting over marshes in tightly packed formations with the precision of shorebirds. It is one of the most widely distributed and cherished gamebirds in the world.
Biology and Physical Characteristics
The morphology of the Green-winged Teal is characterized by a diminutive, buoyant body, a narrow neck, and a small, delicate black bill adapted for surface skimming. The breeding drake is breathtaking: a rich cinnamon-chestnut head traversed by a broad, gleaming iridescent dark green stripe running from the eye down the nape, bordered by a delicate cream line. The breast is pale pinkish-tan with crisp dark circular spots, the flanks are finely vermiculated in slate-grey, and a conspicuous vertical white bar marks the side of the breast in North American drakes (*A. c. carolinensis*). The undertail coverts are a radiant creamy-yellow framed in black. Both sexes possess a brilliant, metallic emerald-green speculum on the trailing edge of the inner wing, which flashes brightly in flight. Females are cloaked in mottled warm brown and buff for camouflage on the nest.
Behavior and Ecology
Unlike deep-diving ducks, the Green-winged Teal is a dabbler that feeds by tipping forward (‘tipping up’) in water barely a few inches deep, or by walking along exposed tidal mudflats, sifting through fine silt for smartweed and sedge seeds. Highly gregarious, teals gather in flocks of hundreds to thousands during autumn migration, executing dazzling, synchronized aerial maneuvers where the entire flock pivots, twists, and dives in unison at speeds exceeding 50 miles per hour. Courtship occurs in winter and early spring, accompanied by high-pitched, piping whistles from the males. Females construct a down-lined saucer nest concealed in dense grass or shrubs near water, incubating six to nine creamy-white eggs for 21 to 23 days.
Conservation and Human Impact
Currently assessed as Least Concern by the IUCN, the Green-winged Teal boasts a massive, stable global population exceeding 8 million individuals. It has benefited immensely from continental wetland conservation initiatives, including the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and duck stamp waterfowl hunting reserves, which protect vital prairie pothole breeding grounds.
Interesting Factoid
The Green-winged Teal is the smallest dabbling duck in North America—weighing barely half a pound—and can explode straight out of the water vertically into full flight in a fraction of a second when startled.