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Outdoors: Nesting with blue-winged teal

Tim Eisele
Special to The Capital Times  —  8/01/2007 8:56 am

Blue-winged teal normally begin to nest in early- to mid-May, and lay an average of 10 eggs per nest. If the nest is destroyed they may attempt to re-nest again later, but then lay fewer eggs.

The hen incubates the eggs for 23 days before the ducklings hatch. This means that some of the eggs are in the nest for about 33 days, since the hen may lay one egg per day before incubating, and if the field where a nest is located is mowed once a month, it may not be enough time for the nest to hatch successfully.

Ron Gatti, DNR waterfowl researcher, said that if a mallard nest is destroyed they normally tend to re-nest. But that isn't always the case with teal.

This year during spring nest searchers Gatti said that the team noticed some re-nesting of teal. They also noticed several teal nests that had been destroyed, one in a hayfield where the hen escaped. Another hen on a nest was picked off by an owl, and another four nests were destroyed by predators.

In the past when teal were studied on public lands, mallards were very much generalists and nested all over, Gatti said. But teal preferred to nest in grass fields and in wet meadow grass that seasonally flooded. Their third most preferable area was alfalfa fields.

"On public land, we found that teal preferred cool season grasses, and tend to like cover that is green and generally shorter that what hen mallards like," he said.

Tim Eisele
Special to The Capital Times  —  8/01/2007 8:56 am