The Eurasian Teal (Anas crecca) is Europe's smallest dabbling duck, a fast, compact bird with one of the more distinctive calls found on Swedish wetlands. The drake is a spectacle: a chestnut-brown head crossed by a broad, glossy green eye-band edged with a thin yellow line, finely vermiculated grey-white body plumage, a rosy-tinged breast, and a distinct yellow patch at the base of the tail, with an emerald-green speculum visible in flight. The female is a brown, mottled camouflage bird without the red and green, more compact in shape, with a diagnostic green speculum and a pale streak behind the eye; the species is notably small, roughly half the size of a Mallard, and flies in tight, fast, sharply turning flocks reminiscent of waders.
The drake's call — a sharp, high, metallic "krrrik" — gave the species its Swedish name and is heard most at dusk and dawn during the March–May display period, while the female gives a rapid, sharp quacking "kvekk-kvekk-kvekk". Teal breed throughout Sweden but most densely in the forest landscape of Norrland, around bogs in Norrbotten and along the coast, nesting in a well-hidden scrape lined with down in dense grass or scrub near water; the female alone incubates 8–11 eggs for 21–23 days, and the precocial ducklings are led to water almost immediately, fledging after 25–30 days. Its diet includes seeds and plant matter filtered from shallow water, aquatic invertebrates such as insect larvae, crustaceans and molluscs, and algae. Most birds leave Sweden in September–October for Western Europe, the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa, returning from March; the population has declined since the 1990s and the species is now red-listed as vulnerable (VU) in Sweden, though it remains a legal game species.
Read about this species in Swedish →