Green-winged Teal Returns!
A Green-winged Teal has returned to Caerlaverock for the third winter in a row. We believe this to be the same bird as the past 2 years because it has very similar behaviour. It seems to have joined the Eurasian Teal population which migrate to Fennoscandia each year and spend their winters at Caerlaverock. The migration to Fennoscandia is around 4,500Km so it may have travelled at least 27,000Km since it joined the Eurasian Teal population. Teal are often short-lived, surviving just 1-2 years on average but the oldest birds recorded were aged 20.
Male Teal leave their mates to incubate the eggs and fly to moulting grounds with other birds to moult their feathers, developing eclipse plumage. As they are flightless at this time, the eclipse plumage is designed for camouflage. The Teal at Caerlaverock are moulting out of their ‘eclipse’ plumage at the moment and the Green-winged Teal has recently developed its characteristic vertical white stripe.
The Green-winged Teal differs from the Eurasian Teal in having a vertical white stripe as opposed to the horizontal white stripe of our native Teal. It originates in North America and migrating vagrants are sometimes blown off-course and arrive here in the UK. We know it is a male as the female of the two species are identical – we wouldn’t know if there were female Green-winged Teal here!
