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The Natural History of British Ducks 
THE BLUE-WINGED TEAL 
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Querquedula discors (LlNN^US) 
In its general habits and love of a warmer climate, this Teal in the New 
World forms the prototype of the Garganey in Europe. In summer it nests 
locally from Labrador to Florida, from Alaska to California, and from the 
Saskatchewan to Kansas ; but it is the first duck to hurry southward to avoid 
the cold, and comes to its winter range by way of the mid-Atlantic and 
western states, east of the Rockies, by the middle of September. During 
autumn in the great sloughs overgrown with wild rice in Minnesota, Illinois, 
and Indiana it is very common, and the birds pass on to spend the winter in 
Virginia, Lower Florida, Mexico, the West Indies, and South America as far 
south as Patagonia, the western contingent passing over to Lower California. 
As a straggler to Europe it is exceedingly rare, as it has only twice been 
noted in Europe — once in Denmark, in 1886, and once in Scotland, where a 
male was killed near Dumfries, and recorded by Mr. W. G. Gibson in the 
' Naturalist,' viii. (1858). This specimen passed into the collection of the late 
Sir William Jardine, and is now in the Edinburgh Museum. 
In America this duck is known as the ' white-faced ' and the ' summer ' 
Teal. Nowhere is it more abundant than in the great rice-grown lagoons of 
the lower Mississippi, and here it is practically unmolested, and, like the green- 
winged Teal, with whom it associates, becomes very tame. In flight, however, 
it is very swift, rising straight into the air and alighting again as suddenly, 
forming a mark worthy of the sportsman. Yet in these comparatively wild 
regions the hunter seldom comes, and those that fall to the gun are killed 
from the ranks of basking flocks by the long gun of the southern squatter, to 
