Cinnamon Teal, male
Spatula cyanoptera
Cinnamon Teal · San Diego · 6 March 2026
A drake Cinnamon Teal on a San Diego pond, and a bird of the American West specifically. It breeds in the marshes of the Great Basin and the Californian valleys and winters here and in Mexico, and unlike most North American dabbling ducks it barely reaches the Atlantic side of the continent at all.
An unmistakable duck where its range overlaps with almost nothing else this colour: deep cinnamon-red overall with a startling red eye. The colour fades to the female's brown by late summer, when he moults, and the eastern textbooks tend to give it short shrift.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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