Green-winged Teal

About the Green-winged Teal

The Green-winged Teal is the smallest dabbling duck in North America, barely a foot long. The drake has a chestnut head with a broad iridescent green sweep behind the eye, a gray body, and a vertical white shoulder bar; the hen is a small mottled brown duck with a green wing patch shared by both sexes.

Green-wings feed in very shallow water and on exposed mud, straining seeds and tiny invertebrates with rapid bill movements. They are agile, fast fliers, and flocks twist and turn in tight formation like shorebirds. Courtship begins on the wintering grounds, with drakes whistling a short, cricket-like call.

In Texas this teal is a common winter visitor statewide, from playa lakes and stock tanks to coastal marsh, arriving in September and mostly gone north by April.