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Cinnamon Teal | Spatula cyanoptera
Kaneeltaling | Cerceta colorada
The Cinnamon Teal is a teal of western North and South America that only seldom reaches the Caribbean. In Cuba it is a rare winter visitor; on the other islands there are only scattered records. The drake is identified by its deep rufous plumage; females closely resemble those of Blue-winged Teal.
Voice
Usually silent. The drake gives a dry, rattling chuk-chuk, the female a soft, hoarse quack.
Recording: Bernabe Lopez-Lanus — CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
38–43 cm, a small dabbling duck with a fairly long bill that broadens slightly towards the tip. The breeding drake is uniformly deep cinnamon-red on head and body, with a dark back, a black stern and a red eye. The female is warm mottled brown, with a rather plain face, a weak eye-stripe and a dark eye. In flight it shows the same pale blue forewing, white bar and green speculum as Blue-winged Teal. Eclipse drakes are brown but keep the red eye.
Confusion species
Female Blue-winged Teal Spatula discors is cooler grey-brown, with a more strongly marked head: a clearer eye-stripe, a broken pale eye-ring and a pale spot at the bill base, and a shorter bill. Many females and young birds cannot be identified with certainty in the field, and hybrids between the two occur. Northern Shoveler Spatula clypeata also has a blue forewing, but a much larger, spoon-shaped bill.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with sedges and reeds, shallow ponds, lagoons and rice fields. It feeds by dabbling and filtering at the surface, on seeds, aquatic plants and small invertebrates. In the Caribbean mainly among Blue-winged Teal.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Rare winter visitor to Cuba. In the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Puerto Rico a vagrant. Breeds in western North America, from southwestern Canada to Mexico, and winters mainly in the southwestern United States and Mexico; separate populations live in Colombia, along the Andes and in southern South America. Which population the Caribbean birds come from has not been established.
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
A chance of a breeding-plumaged drake in late winter among flocks of Blue-winged Teal in Cuba. A lone female can almost never be identified with certainty; a female alongside a drake more readily.
Conservation status
Least Concern. In the Caribbean only a few birds are involved and there is no specific protection for the species.
Scientific name
Spatula cyanoptera | (Vieillot, 1816)
Vieillot described the species in 1816 as Anas cyanoptera; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Spatula was introduced in 1822 by Boie. Spatula is Latin for 'spoon' or 'spatula', after the broad, spoon-shaped bill of the shoveler. cyanoptera is Greek, from kuanos 'blue' and -pteros '-winged', after the pale blue forewing. The specimen the first description was based on came from Río de la Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.