LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL. 101 



Macgillivray (1852) says: 



Its food consists of seeds of grasses, slender rliizomata, which it pulls up from the 

 mud, insects, niollusca, and worms. 



Behavior. — Of its flight and vocal powers, Mr. Millais (1902) writes 

 as follows: 



During the day the teal is one of the most silent and inactive of birds. It will sit 

 for hours motionless, apparently lost in a brown study or with the head buried in the 

 scapulars. Out on the estuary a pack rests on the tidal heavo without a .sipn of 

 movement until night comes and with it the desire for food. In the daj'^time, during 

 the early autumn, even in our much disturbed islands, teal are sometimes extremely 

 tame, and will permit the approach of man within a few yards before flying awaj', 

 and there are always certain holes in the large bogs where teal may be found and 

 closely approached with certainty unless they have been previously disturbed. On 

 being flushed they shoot up straight into the air, sometimes very rapidly, and often 

 swaying slightly and rendering themselves a by no means easy mark — in fact, I once 

 heard a friend, who had ineffectually expended 300 cartridges in one day, declare 

 that rising teal were far more difficult to kill than snipe. Be that as it may, I can 

 remember certain windy days when driven teal were wild and "dodgy," and were 

 quite as difficult to bag as the snipe with whom they flew. Teal can suddenly turn 

 in the midst of a straight forward flight and either dive downward, or, what is far more 

 difficult for the gunner to accept, shoot straight upward, and only present as a target 

 a practically invulnerable stern. It is a pretty sight on a sunny day to watch a flock 

 of teal about to settle; they wheel and swing almost as much as flocks of dunlins, the 

 dark backs and the light breasts alternately shining; and it is not until they have 

 thoroughly surveyed their prospective resting place and its approaches that they come 

 to a halt. Wlailst on the wing one male occasionally utters his low double whistle, 

 but teal are silent birds at all times, and the female rarely calls unless frightened, 

 such as when the brood is threatened, when she emits a subdued little "quack." 



Fall. — On the fall migration, teal are inclined to wander and, as 

 most of our records have occurred during the late fall, winter, and 

 early spring, they are probably stragglers from Palaearctic regions, or 

 from the Aleutian Islands, that have strayed from their normal 

 migration routes. Green-winged teal are found regularly in the 

 Aleutian Islands in winter, but whether these are migrants from the 

 mainland of Alaska, Nettion carolinense, or the resident breeding 

 birds, Nettion crecca, I can not say. Pro])ably most of the European 

 teal that breed in the Aleutian Islands migrate in the fall down the 

 Asiatic coast to Siam and India, with the birds from Siberia. Dr. 

 John C. Piiillips (191 1*^ and 1912) relates an interesting incident which 

 illustrates the tendency of this species to return each spring to the 

 locality of its birth. A young European teal which was hatched and 

 reared on his grounds in Wenliam, Massachusetts, in 1910, returned 

 to the same pond in 1911 and again in 1912. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Breeding range. — Northern parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. Ice- 

 land, the British Isles, throughout Europe and Asia, north to 70° N. 



