BLUE-WINGED TEAL 
389 
I believe if one could winter them in some warm spring where they could always have 
access to open water, they would prove one of the easiest species to breed. Even 
under poor conditions they have nested on my ponds and raised large broods of 
their own accord. One pair hatched as many as ten young. Mr. John A. Cox of 
East Brewster, Massachusetts, used to rear some. They are apt to become more tame 
in confinement than the Green-wing. 
Blue-wings have always been rare birds in European collections, and, so fg-r as I 
can ascertain, have never been kept in the London Zoological Gardens. According 
to Miss Hubbard (1907), the well-known dealer Mr. Jamrach imported from thirty 
to forty pairs between the years 1900 and 1904 and these were sold for £3 the pair. 
Both Earl Grey and Mr. Wormald write me that they have kept and bred the 
species. Portal (1915) had one pair which nested each year but he reared only one 
of the young. This failure was accounted for by various accidents and the presence 
of vermin, and I am told that other British wild-fowl enthusiasts have had the same 
trouble. The single one which Mr. Portal reared behaved little differently from the 
young of the Common Teal and fared well on ordinary duck-meal, egg, duck-weed, 
and bread-crumbs. The old males started to go into eclipse in the middle of June. 
The eclipse was completed as early as July 4, he says, but this is entirely contrary 
to my own experience. My males begin to “ go off” in plumage very early, but the 
process to full eclipse is a long one and new wing-feathers are sometimes assumed 
long before the attainment of the full eclipse which is really an autumn plumage 
in this Teal. Mr. Portal, who has kept many Teal, recommends “paddy” or un- 
husked rice, with some wheat and barley, as appropriate food. He adds that the 
birds are very fond of worms, raw machine-minced rabbit, soaked dog-biscuit or 
Spratt’s “crissel”; and fondest of all of water-cress and pond-weeds pulled up by 
the roots with all the insects on them. The species has occasionally been exhibited 
on the Continent, and has been kept by the Berlin and Rotterdam Gardens among 
others. 
Hybrids. Crosses between the Blue-wing and other species are very rare and 
the only wild-killed hybrids yet recorded are those with the Cinnamon Teal and 
with the Shoveller (Suchetet, 1896; Deane, 1905a). 
