Cinnamon Teal

Cinnamon Teal, Beaverton, Oregon, 8 November 2011 by Greg Gillson.

 

What does eBird tell us about the status and distribution of Cinnamon Teal in the Pacific NW?

You may be interested in visiting the eBird page on Cinnamon Teal in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

The quick-view weekly bar chart shows that Cinnamon Teal can be found somewhere in the Pacific NW all year, they are regular February through November, and most frequently observed April through June. Digging deeper, the 'Frequency' tab shows that nearly 10% of all birder's checklists report Cinnamon Teal the week starting May 15. The 'Abundance' graph shows two peaks in average number of birds per checklist--both in May and in August-September, after the young-of-the-year are out and about. Finally, the 'Average Count' when birds are detected, shows that when you do see Cinnamon Teal in the Pacific NW you can expect to see an average of about 20 individuals from mid-August to mid-September.

Looking now at the map of sightings, one can see that Cinnamon Teal are widely distributed in the Pacific NW, away from the mountains and extensive desert or grasslands lacking water. They are less common on the immediate coast. If you switch to the winter month of December, sightings are restricted to the valleys west of the Cascades with unfrozen water. Switch to the current month of the year and you can see all sightings within the last 30 days highlighted in orange rather than blue.

Click on any of those orange flags to find out details about the sighting and click on 'checklist' to see that observer's full list of species for that date and location.

Read a previous post on Cinnamon Teal.

Memorial Day weekend at Malheur: Part 27

Cinnamon Teal at Malheur NWR, Oregon on 30 May, 2010 by Greg Gillson.

 

[Click to read all Memorial Day weekend at Malheur posts.]

Well, we've done it! This Cinnamon Teal, a common breeding bird in the Malheur region, is the last photo in this series.

And what a pretty duck it is, common in every roadside ditch and puddle!

We've covered some of the birds and showed some scenery from the flooded agricultural fields of Burns and Hines in the north to the tiny town of Frenchglen in the south, with Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the middle.

We didn't head farther south to the similarly tiny hamlet of Fields and its oasis or any of the seasonal streamlets near the border with Nevada. And the road up the Steens will not be open until later summer when the snow melts more on its 9000 foot summit. We didn't head east to Diamond Craters or Round Barn. And we didn't venture north of Burns to Idlewild Campground and its ponderosa pine birds.

But we did cover the main portion of "Malheur" during, perhaps, a typical 4-day trip during Memorial Day weekend.

I hope you enjoyed it!

The photos presented in this series, as well as additional photos, are in my pBase photo archive. I will probably be adding to the photos over the next year as I go through all the shots. After all, I am still working on some of the photos from 2009!

At the pond... Cinnamon Teal

Cinnamon Teal, Jackson Bottom Wetlands, Hillsboro, Oregon on 30 May 2008 by Greg Gillson.

 

The aptly named male Cinnamon Teal is a beautiful little duck in breeding plumage. In flight, the upperwing has a broad pale blue leading edge and green speculum (flight feathers on the inner wing). The male has a distinctive red eye. The brown mottled female, on the other hand, is extremely similar to the female Blue-winged Teal.

Male ducks molt into a cryptic "eclipse" plumage resembling the female from July to September. They will be flightless for a few weeks as they molt all their flight feathers at once, thus the need for this camouflaged plumage.

Interestingly, the Cinnamon Teal is the only duck with breeding populations in both North and South America. The North American population breeds in the West from southern British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, south through California, extreme western Texas and into northern Mexico. In winter, birds withdraw from the frozen northern areas and extend well into Mexico.

Cinnamon Teal nest in marshes and shallow ponds throughout the Pacific Northwest. They are generally rare in the mountains and along the immediate coastline. A few birds may winter west of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington, and west of the Sierra-Nevadas of northern California. Migrant birds arrive by March, with some birds as early as January along the coast. In the Great Basin, birds arrive in April and May, where they become common in the marshlands of the high desert.