The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a species of bird in the duck, goose, and swan family Anatidae.

One of the smaller members of the dabbling duck group, it occurs in North America, where it breeds from southern Alaska to Nova Scotia, and south to northern Texas.

The first formal description of the blue-winged teal was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1766 in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[3] A molecular phylogentic study comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences published in 2009 found that the genus Anas, as then defined, was non-monophyletic.

[11][12] The western blue-winged teal inhabits that part of the breeding range west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Some populations of blue-winged teals nest along the Atlantic Coast from New Brunswick to Pea Island, North Carolina.

They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.

[12] Blue-winged teal use rocks protruding above water, muskrat houses, trunks or limbs of fallen trees, bare stretches of shoreline, or mud flats for resting sites.

Large numbers of blue-winged teal appear on wintering grounds in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas in September.

[13] The onset of courtship among immature blue-winged teal often starts in late January or early February.

In areas south of the breeding grounds, blue-winged teal are more active in courtship during the spring migration than are most other ducks.

At Delta Marshes, Manitoba, blue-winged teal nesting was delayed a week in 1950 due to abnormally cold weather.

During incubation, the drake leaves its mate and moves to suitable molting cover where it becomes flightless for a period of 3 to 4 weeks.

[12][18] Blue-winged teal are surface feeders and prefer to feed on mud flats, in fields, or in shallow water where there is floating and shallowly submerged vegetation plus abundant small aquatic animal life.

They mostly eat vegetative matter consisting of seeds or stems and leaves of sedge, grass, pondweed, smartweed (Polygonum spp.

[13] One-fourth of the food consumed by blue-winged teal is animal matter such as mollusks, crustaceans, and insects.

[11][12][13] Common predators of blue-winged teal include humans, snakes, snapping turtles (Chleydra serpentina), dogs, cats, muskellunge (Esox masquinongy), American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), magpies (Pica spp.

), ground squirrels, coyotes (Canis latrans), red foxes (Vulpes fulva), gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), raccoons (Procyon lotor), long-tailed weasels (Mustela frenata), American minks (Mustela vison), striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), spotted skunks (Spilogale putorius), and American badgers (Taxidea taxus).