Sunday, March 28, 2010

Bird ID Challenge # 2



This pair was photographed at Cuesta Inlet, near where I live - on the edge of Morro Bay (Coastal Central California), on 3/25/10. Please let me know your ID and the reasons for your it, by clicking on "comments" at the bottom of this post. I will post the ID on Wednesday evening.
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See the comments section for the answer.

8 comments:

  1. BlueWing Teal--White crecent on head

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  2. Blued-winged Teal. The crescent on the male's face and the white near the tail are truly distinctive, at which point their lack on the female is also distinctive.

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  3. The male is self-evident with the crescent on his face.
    The female field marks are more subtle: the broken eye-ring and the darker eye line, the lighter feathers at the base of the beak, the larger (than the male) body feathers.
    Pat

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  4. The white crescent and hip patch on the male, and the faint eyestripe and equal size compared to the male for the female identify these two birds as BLUE-WINGED TEAL.

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  5. I must have made this too hard! First impressions are not always right.

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  6. The female doesn't show enough pale in front of the bill. It must be a female Cinnamon Teal

    Mike

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  7. It would be easy to concur that this is a pair of BW Teal ... however, I wonder whether the female, is a Cinnamon or a hybrid (on eBird there is BWT, CT ABD Blue-winged/Cinnamon Teal... implies hybrid or 'don't know'?)due to her bill appearing a bit thicker and longer w/ light edge, like NShoveler (Sibley). Her coloration is more cinnamon than the gray of a F BWTeal ... After all this, I also see that Weds evening is April Fool's Eve ...

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  8. Everyone correctly identified the male Blue-winged Teal, but some were thrown off by the female Cinnamon Teal that was photographed with it - a combination worth noting in the eastern half of this country, but not unusual here on Morro Bay in the winter. The female Cinnamon Teal is typically more of a warm brown (this one is in fact more of a warm brown color than many Cinnamons), has a more spatulate bill than the Blue-winged, has a smaller headed appearance with a more slick-backed look to the head (Blue-winged has a larger more blocky look to the head), and the face on a Blue-winged has a more prominate white loral spot and overall more contrasty pattern - often with more contrast between a lighter supercillium and darker cap than the Cinnamon. I have posted a photo of a female Bule-winged and a male taken from the same location this winter, for comparison. Next Bird ID Challenge is Sunday evening.

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