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THE AMERICAN GREEN-WINGED TEAL 
Nettion Carolinense (J. F. Gmelin) 
This small duck represents in the New World the Teal of Europe and 
Asia. As a rule it does not nest so far north as the other species of surface- 
feeders, although it is supposed to breed in West Greenland. In its summer 
range it extends no further than Wyoming, Alberta, Montana, Minnesota, 
Manitoba and British Columbia. In September great numbers may be seen 
collecting on the prairie ' holes ' and the lakes of western Canada, and these 
gradually, as the season advances, work their way south, to winter in Kansas, 
Virginia, in the rice-fields of Carolina and Georgia, Cuba, Honduras and 
Mexico. They also extend their visits to the Bermudas, the West Indies, and 
Central America, and there is reason to believe that they go still further south. 
The green-winged Teal has occurred three times in Great Britain. An 
adult male was shot near Scarborough, in November 1851, and passed into 
the collection of the late Lord Hill, at Hawkestone, where I have recently seen 
it. Another was shot on the Kingsbridge estuary in Devon, and was ex- 
hibited by Mr. Howard Saunders at a meeting of the Zoological Society on 
December 4, 1888. The same naturalist gives another example in his ' Manual 
of British Birds.' 
The general habits of the green-winged Teal are identical with the Teal 
of Europe, so little need be said of them ; whilst, owing to the abundance and 
variety of diet, the birds become popular or otherwise as an article of food 
according to the nature of the food upon which they have been living. In 
the Southern States the little ' green-wings ' are considered second to none as 
a bird for the table, owing to the delicacy of their flesh, induced by an 
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