{"id":33059,"date":"2024-02-19T15:59:37","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T23:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=33059"},"modified":"2024-02-19T15:59:37","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T23:59:37","slug":"confused-teal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=33059","title":{"rendered":"Confused teal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Green-winged Teal is a rather small dabbler that is neither rare nor common around here. It spends its winters to our south and its summers to our north. Twice a year it courses through here as it goes one way or the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One male has been hanging out with twenty or thirty mallards for the last couple of days. The mallards will stay, and the teal will head north. But, it typically expects to arrive at the breeding grounds with a mate, and this seems to be much on its mind, for it did not bring a mate when it arrived here. So, it has chosen to keep close company with a female mallard.<\/p>\n<p>Now although the female Mallard is big and female Green-winged Teal is small, their plumage is much the same, so it may be easy to confuse the one with the other. In addition to following the female mallard, he also has regularly attacked male mallards, his presumed rivals, and has done courtship displays by frequently rearing up in the Lake and flapping.<\/p>\n<p>The male Green-winged Teal has a dark beak, and a chestnut-coloured head with a green eye patch.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33061\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/greenwingedteal240218as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The teal followed the female mallard wherever she went on water or&#8230;<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33068\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/greenwingedteal240218es.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;on land. She seemed to tolerate this, but largely ignored the activity.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33069\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/greenwingedteal240218ds.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The teal regularly chased any male mallard he thought had eyes for her. They just got out of\u00a0his way. Photo by Cynthia Fraser.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33067\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/greenwingedteal240218csCCF.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When in the Lake, the male Green-winged Teal would frequently do a courtship display by rearing up out the water and flapping its wings. This provided a good chance to see the green feathers on its wings.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33060\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/greenwingedteal240218bs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"720\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It is likely that he will migrate and she will stay put. However, hybrid animals have been reported.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The Green-winged Teal is a rather small dabbler that is neither rare nor common around here. It spends its winters to our south and its summers to our north. Twice a year it courses through here as it goes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=33059\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33059"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33072,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33059\/revisions\/33072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}