Green Band: British Columbia

You’re a Blue-winged teal!

Male and female blue wing teal illustration

You were banded near Williams Lake in central British Columbia (BC) one late summer day just after you learned to fly.

Some blue-winged teal migrate all the way to South American countries like Brazil and Peru for the winter.

Your parents arrived in BC in the spring, after a long migration from their wintering home far to the south. After mating, your mother laid you and nine other eggs in a nest hidden by tall grasses. Your mom chose a spot near a wetland, so she could feed every day on the rich invertebrates and plant seeds.

Since you are a small duck, your family is one of the first species to fly south when the weather turns cold. Once you grew your flight feathers, it was time to migrate south to the wetlands of Mexico and South American countries like Venezuela. There, people speak Spanish, and call you a “pato” (which means duck).

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FAST FACTS:

creamy white eggs
one of the first waterfowl species to migrate south in the fall
a dabbling duck that eats at water surface or by “tipping up”
second most common duck in North America however its population drops whenever there are long periods of drought on the prairies, which dry up some of the small pothole wetlands they depend on during nesting