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Eurasian Teal

Eurasian Teal

Anas crecca

Identify the Eurasian Teal by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

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The Eurasian Teal is one of the smallest dabbling ducks, breeding on small lakes, ponds and wetlands across northern Eurasia and moving south for the winter. Males are striking in breeding plumage, while females are well camouflaged. Outside the breeding season it is very sociable, gathering in flocks on sheltered wetlands. The North American Green-winged Teal, long treated as a subspecies, is now usually regarded as a separate species.

Did you know?

  • The colour name “teal” comes from the iridescent blue-green on this duck.
  • It is Europe's smallest dabbling duck.

Voice

Call
Flight call

About the species

Identification

A small duck with narrow, pointed wings; the wing shows a clear white bar and a glossy green speculum. The breeding male has a chestnut head with a yellow-bordered green patch, grey flanks with a white horizontal stripe and black-edged yellow patches at the rear. The female is mottled brown and slender-billed (often orange at the base), with a fairly dark eye-stripe but without the dark cheek stripe of female Garganey, and a pale streak at the base of the tail.

Family

Anatidae

Size

Large (crow)

Colours

grey, brown, green, white

About the habitat

Breeds on forest lakes and ponds, bog and tundra pools, slow rivers and marshes; on migration and in winter uses reed-fringed lakes, bays, floodplains and sheltered coastal wetlands.

Diet

Seeds of aquatic plants and small aquatic invertebrates such as insects and molluscs, taken by dabbling and filtering in shallow water and along vegetated margins.

Behaviour

Forms flocks outside the breeding season; feeds by dabbling and up-ending in shallow water and flies fast and nimbly. Nests on the ground, often some distance from water; the female incubates, and the ducklings swim soon after hatching. The male's call is a clear, ringing “krik”, the female's a rattling quack.

Sources

Photo: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eurasian teal (Anas crecca crecca) male Qingshui.jpg

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC1088486, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/1088486

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC946313, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/946313

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions + Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_teal

See also