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Cinnamon Teal | Spatula cyanoptera
Kaneeltaling | Cerceta canela
The Cinnamon Teal is a small dabbling duck of western North America that also breeds in northern Mexico and on the Mexican plateau. In winter birds from the north join them and the species spreads across Mexico; further south it is scarce. A separate population lives in South America.
Voice
Usually silent. The male has 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 male is a uniform 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 fairly plain face, a faint eyestripe and a dark eye. In flight the same pale blue forewing, white band and green speculum as Blue-winged Teal. Eclipse males are brown, but keep the red eye.
Confusion species
The female Blue-winged Teal Spatula discors is a colder greyish-brown, with a more strongly marked face: a clearer eyestripe, a broken pale eye-ring, a pale spot at the base of the bill and a shorter bill. Many females and young birds cannot be identified with certainty in the field, and hybrids between the two occur. The male Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis is also reddish-brown, but has white cheeks, a blue bill and a stiff, often cocked tail.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes with bulrushes and cattails, shallow lakes, reservoirs, saline and alkaline lakes on the plateau, rice fields and flooded fields; in winter also coastal lagoons. It dabbles and sieves with its bill in shallow water for seeds and small invertebrates.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Breeds locally in northern Mexico, in Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua, and locally on the plateau south to Jalisco and central Mexico. In winter in much of Mexico, mainly in the north and on the plateau, and more scarcely along the coasts to Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz. Scarce in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, rare further south, with a few records in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Outside the guide area the species breeds in the western United States and south-western Canada and in South America.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Shallow marshes and lakes on the Mexican plateau, where the species is locally also present in summer; the red eye and the cinnamon colour of the male show even against the light.
Conservation status
Not threatened globally. In the guide area locally fairly common in the north and on the plateau; drainage and pollution of the lakes and marshes of the plateau have reduced the breeding range.
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.