If you don’t carefully look at the brown blobs in local ponds and flooded agricultural fields this time of year, another bird you might miss is the handsome Green-winged Teal.
These little dabbling ducks are about the size of a crow. They have pretty cinnamon-brown heads with a green streak that runs from their eye to behind their heads.
Southern Wisconsin is sandwiched between their breeding grounds and wintering grounds, so we mostly see them in the spring and fall.
Until a couple of years ago, Jill and I didn’t even know these birds visited during migration season each year.
From a distance they can look like Mallards, so we probably saw teals for years but made the assumption that they were Mallards. Now we look more closely at flocks of ducks.
Recently we found a pair of Green-winged Teals swimming in a retention pond next to a busy street in the middle of our city.
Green-winged Teals eat seeds from aquatic plants and also agricultural grains. They also feed on aquatic invertebrates.
They also have a funny little whistle call, that’s easy to identify.