Surrounding vegetation usually arches over the nest, concealing it. Incubation is 23-24 days. The blue-winged teal is a familiar, common duck of inland North America, although its numbers have been reduced through cultivation and habitat destruction in its primary breeding range, the prairie pothole region in mid North America. The female's coloration is similar, but duller. The species can best be identified in flight by the white belly and fore-wings.
Wigeons feed on aquatic plants, sometimes coming ashore for shoots of grains and grasses.
They breed in the northwestern United States, Canada and Alaska, nesting in dry, sedge-lined meadows around lakes and sloughs. The 7-9 eggs are incubated about 23 days. Wigeons migrate through Pennsylvania in September and October. Some occasionally winter here, but most go to the southern states and farther south. The male has a green head, white breast and chestnut sides.