Cinnamon Teal

About the Cinnamon Teal

The drake Cinnamon Teal is one of the most richly colored ducks in North America - deep rusty cinnamon from head to belly, set off by a ruby-red eye and powder-blue shoulder patches that flash in flight. The hen is a warm mottled brown, so similar to a female Blue-winged Teal that even experienced observers often let the males do the identifying.

Cinnamon Teal are dabblers of shallow, marshy water, straining seeds and aquatic invertebrates through their relatively long, spatulate bills - a bill shape halfway to a shoveler's, and sometimes used the same way, swinging side to side through soupy water. Pairs and small groups are the rule; this teal rarely forms the big flocks of its blue-winged cousin.

It is the western counterpart in a close trio with Blue-winged Teal, and the two hybridize where they overlap - hybrid drakes showing patchworks of cinnamon and the Blue-wing's white face crescent turn up in Texas most winters and keep duck-watchers honest. Uniquely among our dabblers, the Cinnamon Teal also has resident populations in South America.

In Texas the species is a westerly migrant and winter duck, commonest on the High Plains, in the Trans-Pecos, and along the coast from fall through spring, with smaller numbers scattered across central Texas wetlands. A cinnamon drake glowing in a green-winged flock is a highlight of any winter marsh scan.