Just ask any wingshooter who has struggled from a marshy hide on a humid September morning to take an incoming bluewing only to have the little duck flame past so quickly the shotgun never reaches the shoulder before the teal is out of range. Or ask a waterfowl manager who has to recommend the timing of the September teal season and hope the dates coincide with the early migrants' main push through a state. Both the shooter and the wildlife managers are bound to miss occasionally. Just as teal challenge wingshooters with their quick flight, twisting moves and defiant strafing of decoys, they often confound waterfowl managers with their sometimes erratic migration chronology.
Bluewings are the first ducks to make their move south from northern nesting grounds.
The bulk of those first migrants invariably are adult male bluewings, birds that just finished their annual molt. That all-male first wave moves south, followed soon after by a smaller wave consisting of adult female bluewings who did not raise young or lost their broods. Next, sometimes as long as three, four or even five weeks after the adult males have departed, the bulk of adult females and their just-fledged young leave the prairies and trickle south. Where, when and for how long the birds stop along the way also varies and depends on many of the same factors as their departure from nesting areas. If teal find great habitat in, say, Kansas during mid-September, they may tarry there longer than normal, delaying their arrival in Texas.