Cinnamon Teal

Spatula cyanoptera · Waterfowl

Cinnamon Teal, pair

San Diego, 6 March 2026

A pair of Cinnamon Teal out of the water and foraging along the bank, a scatter of American Coots behind them. Unlike most dabbling ducks, Cinnamon Teal in the West barely migrate, so a pair like this may hold the same stretch of pond for the whole season. The male's colour is the rarest in North American ducks - nothing else on the continent is this red - and it fades to the female's brown by late summer, when he moults.

Cinnamon Teal, pair

San Diego, 6 March 2026

A pair of Cinnamon Teal out of the water and foraging along the bank of a San Diego pond, a scatter of American Coots behind them. This is a duck of the marshes of the American West, and unlike most dabbling ducks the western ones barely migrate, so a pair like this may hold the same stretch of pond for the whole season.

The male's colour is the rarest in North American ducks - nothing else on the continent is this red - and it fades to the female's brown by late summer, when he moults.

Cinnamon Teal, male

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.