Cinnamon Teal or cinnamon teal in the east?

**UPDATE 30 September 2020**

I added a few new photos:

6a - photo of the Toronto bird flapping which confirms it as an adult male

19-21 - three photos of a different bird at Forest (Lambton Co.)

Introduction

Last Saturday, while conducting our Great Canadian Birdathon (still looking for donations - we've already raised over $10,000 for bird conservation!) we came across a distinctly "cinnamon" teal just outside of Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario. We quickly got the word out and subsequently lots of people had a chance to look for it. Since then I've been trying to figure out whether it was indeed a Cinnamon Teal or maybe just a cinnamon teal. This post is an attempt to assemble all the information I have along with photos from a variety of people (thanks to them all for sharing!).

I'll post a bit of back-story, then photos of some different birds that have been seen in Ontario this fall, followed by some discussion. Please leave comments here or if you're on Facebook on this thread at Advanced Bird ID.

Cinnamon Teal status in Ontario

Cinnamon Teal is a very rare bird in Ontario. Prior to 2020 there were 19 records accepted by the OBRC dating back to 1983. Five of those come from northwestern Ontario (Rainy River and Thunder Bay Districts) and the rest are from southern Ontario. The seasonal distribution (based on first observation) is:

Spring (18 April-11 June) plus an outlier of 4 March - 13 records

Fall (17 November-8 December) - 2 records

Summering records (4 records)

1. 28 May-9 July 1983 (pair, nest with eggs)
2. 23 June-21 July (pair, but the female died)
3. 1 July
4. 27 May-23 June

In my opinion, there is a huge gap in records in August-September (no records!) when they are exiting the northern breeding grounds. This is also the time of year when southern Ontario sees by far the biggest concentrations of Blue-winged Teal. Blue-winged Teal is a former common breeder in Ontario but has declined significantly to the point it barely breeds in most parts of the province and I assume at least some of the flush of birds we see here in August and September come from the west. 

This gap in records is evident not just in Ontario, but throughout the east.

So why the gap in records? It must be an issue with identification. Females are much harder to separate from Blue-winged Teal (the only records in Ontario of females are of birds paired with basic-plumage ("breeding plumage") males). In August to September, male Cinnamon Teal will be in alternate plumage ("non-breeding" or "eclipse" plumage) so much harder to identify.

Fall 2020 reports

Toronto - August 31, 2020

The story starts at the end of August when Paul Prior found a similar bird in Toronto. He posted it along with photos as a possible Cinnamon Teal and Ron Pittaway sent photos to Peter Pyle in California. Peter replied that it looked fine for Cinnamon Teal and that the rusty breast is typical of adult females in alternate (eclipse) plumage and rules out  Blue-winged Teal. I can't speak for other birders, but I saw  those photos and thought that it really stuck out and gave me a search image to look for. Here are some of Paul Prior's photos taken August 31, 2020:

1. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

2. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

3. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

4. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

5. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

6. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

6a. "cinnamon" teal at Toronto, August 31, 2020. Photo by Paul Prior.

Outside of Rondeau Provincial Park (Chatham-Kent): September 19, 2020+

With the search image of a "BWTE with rusty tones" in mind, we (Ken Burrell, Mike Burrell, and Jim Burrel) found this bird on September 19, 2020. We couldn't manage good photos on the day we found it, but here are the best from subsequent days. We were also somewhat rushed as we were conducting a big day raising money for bird conservation. In the field, this bird stuck out as having really reddish tones concentrated in the breast, but extending down the flanks and into the undertail. We discussed the bill in the field as being slightly larger than the nearby Blue-winged Teal but not obviously massive. On September 20, 2020 a second bird was noted with the first as also having a reddish breast, but not as extensive reddish elsewhere on the body.

I sent some of these photos (of "both" birds) to Peter Pyle and Alvao Jaramillo for their opinion. Alvaro thought the first could be a Cinnamon Teal but had reservations about it, particularly the bill (I'm paraphrasing) but felt the second bird was more likely a rusty looking Blue-winged Teal.

Peter at first thought the more rusty bird looked fine for an adult male Cinnamon Teal (aged by evenly-shaped back feathers) and the rusty feathers could be left over from basic (breeding) plumage in spring. The second bird he thought also looked OK for an eclipse adult male (sexed based on large bill). After some back and forth with him where I asked about certain features (more on that below) he agreed that some things were inconsistent with a pure Cinnamon Teal. Note that as he pointed out it was hard to be sure which photos were of which bird. 

7. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 20, 2020. Photo by Mourad Jabra

8. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 20, 2020. Photo by Mourad Jabra

9. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 20, 2020. Photo by Mourad Jabra

10. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 20, 2020. Photo by Mourad Jabra

11. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 20, 2020. Photo by Mourad Jabra

12. "cinnamon" teal (note second bird) at Chatham-Kent, September 20, 2020. Photo by Mourad Jabra

13. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 22, 2020. Photo by Garry Sadler

14. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 22, 2020. Photo by Garry Sadler

15. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 23, 2020. Photo by Denise Dykema

16. "cinnamon" teal at Chatham-Kent, September 23, 2020. Photo by Denise Dykema

It should be noted that because there are at least two birds there with rusty breasts, I can't be totally sure all photos are of the same individual and I haven't been back to the site to make additional observations.

Forest (Lambton County) 

James Holdsworth, with the search image in mind, then found another teal with "cinnamon" colouring, this past week, this time at Forest Sewage Lagoons in Lambton and suggested that all these "cinnamon" teals were oddly-coloured Blue-winged Teal.

17. "cinnamon" teal at Lambton Co., September 24, 2020. Photo by James Holdsworth

18. "cinnamon" teal at Lambton Co., September 24, 2020. Photo by James Holdsworth

19. "cinnamon" teal (different from 17-18) at Lambton Co., September 24, 2020. Photo by Mark Buchanan

20. "cinnamon" teal (different from 17-18) at Lambton Co., September 24, 2020. Photo by Mark Buchanan

21. "cinnamon" teal (different from 17-18) at Lambton Co., September 24, 2020. Photo by Mark Buchanan

Discussion

So we're left with an unexpected flush of "cinnamon" teal associating with Blue-winged Teal right in the time of year when we could predict Cinnamon Teal should show up. But three records of four individuals seems pretty unlikely...

Some photos of clear-cut September US Cinnamon Teal from within their range:

Males

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/26555933

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/265491901

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/265414511

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/265235801

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/263264641

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/262197541

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/262141621 (full "eclipse")

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/179360691 (I think it's a male)

Females

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/265001021 (pair)

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/263291631

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/262583831

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/262064331

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/261703271

https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/261419721

Plumage

Those rusty feathers are pretty extreme, especially on the Lambton and Chatham-Kent birds. Could it be staining? If not, it's hard to imagine a Blue-winged Teal showing that much rufous feathering left over from basic (breeding) plumage. And it's too early for them to be molting really - the only advanced in molt September bird I could find online was this one :)

Facial pattern

The facial pattern looks pretty bold to me, especially on the Lambton bird. The Chatham-Kent bird(s) is perhaps slightly more muted and the Toronto bird is best. But I don't think any of them are "perfect" for Cinnamon Teal; all show some pale at the base of the bill and a fairly pronounced eye stripe.

Sex

I haven't seen them, but apparently "flapping" photos exist of the Toronto bird to identify it as a male (as per Paul Prior). For the Chatham-Kent bird, the one in flight sure looks like a young female wing pattern, though I could be mistaken. I'm not sure about the Lambton bird.

Age

Age is tricky to assign with these photos. The only bird that has really good photos to see feather detail are some of the shots of the Chatham-Kent bird(s) but there is the caveat that we could be looking at different individuals in different photos. Peter Pyle aged the bird in photo 10 as an adult, possibly second year bird. The flight shots (15/16) seem to indicate a hatch year bird.

Eye colour

Adult male Cinnamon Teals should show an orange/red eye. It's surprisingly obvious. Some birds apparently can show a brownish eye in the summer but in my relatively quick search of the Macaulay Library I didn't see any obvious males with brownish eyes. Here's a "typical" male in September...I am confident that all of the birds here have brownish eyes. That's no big deal if we're dealing with females or hatch year birds, but I think it is a pretty big red flag if we're talking adult males.

Bill

Alvaro put it really well in his email to me, "I always joke that we have Blue-wing, and then the greater and lesser shoveler". And that bares out pretty well looking at photos, Cinnamon Teal has a pretty honkin' bill. Measurements given show a pretty big overlap and I wonder if the difference might be less on females or young birds, but to me none of these birds jump out as having a huge bill even with direct comparisons with Blue-winged Teal. They may be on the biggish end for Blue-winged Teal but not overly huge. However, scrolling through images on Macaulay Library you can find quite a range of variation in this feature in both species. 

Conclusion

Are Cinnamon Teal really this hard to pick out? Or are we just trying a bit hard here? Could these all be colour-stained Blue-winged Teal? Hybrids? The more I look at photos of Cinnamon Teal I wonder if the overall plumage colour is just a red herring! What does a hatch-year male Cinnamon Teal look like in September?

The whole point of writing this was to solicit opinions from people with experience separating the two...so, please leave your comments below or on the Advanced Bird ID thread.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Alvaro Jaramillo and Peter Pyle for really quick and thoughtful responses to my initial and follow-up questions. Thanks to Paul Prior, Mourad Jabra, Garry Sadler, Denise Dykema, and James Holdsworth for allowing me to post their photos here. Steve Charbonneau helped round up the photos. And thanks to all the interesting discussion on these birds I've already read - look forward to reading more!

How our past experiences influence our assumptions (geese)

I grew up in southwestern Ontario and not surprisingly, that biased my view on birds and their movements and populations in the province. I don't think there is a better example of this than my view of goose migration.

For most of my life, I thought seeing several hundred or even a thousand Canada Geese was a good flock. And sure enough, scrutiny of any "good-sized" flock (read: a few hundred) in my neck of the woods has a pretty good shot at turning up "something good", usually Cackling or Snow Geese or maybe if you're really lucky a Greater White-fronted or Ross's.

Big or small flock? Depends on where you're from! Spot the Cacklers?

My eyes were opened when I started hanging around this girl, Erica and her family's farm southeast of Ottawa. Turns out what I thought was a lot of geese was pretty sad. Not a day goes by in far southeastern Ontario during migration season when you can't easily find tens of thousands of geese in the air or in the farm fields.

My view of Ontario goose migration, like so many other southern Ontario-centric birders, was extremely flawed. Southeastern Ontario is on a huge goose flyway along the Atlantic coast. In recent years, as the Greater Snow Goose migration has increased in southeastern Ontario, awareness of this seems to be increasing, but still most Ontario birders really don't appreciate how different goose migration is in the southeast.

Greater Snow Geese near Cornwall

This really revealed itself to me while on the OBRC and the committee was discussing a record of Barnacle Geese outside of Ottawa. In short, I am of the belief that Barnacle Goose occurs as a natural vagrant in this part of the province but some people, largely because of their southwestern Ontario view of goose migration, disagree. So, I decided to compile some information...that spiraled a bit out of control and before I knew it I had a decent article for Ontario Birds.

Anyways, this is all to say that I am happy with an article I recently wrote for Ontario Birds. Here are a couple of figures to get you thinking:

Canada Geese banded in Greenland and recovered or re-sighted in Canada and the United States. Prepared using data obtained from the Canadian Wildlife Service Bird Banding Office.

You might notice a similarity with this:

Barnacle Goose reports in eBird for northeast US and Canada.

If you're an OFO member check out the article in the December issue of Ontario Birds. If you're not...why not? (email me and I can send a pdf)

Looking forward to hearing your feedback on this one!

Dark morph Red-tailed Hawk in Ontario

There seems to be a lot more interest in Red-tailed Hawk subspecies in Ontario lately. This is obviously a good thing as it is great to see people taking an interest in what is our most commonly observed hawk and probably most variable species in southern Ontario! This species makes for a great study here...I think of them like juncos - you can stare at them all day long and notice the individual variation from bird to bird - no two are exactly alike!

If you are interested at all in the variation of this species then you should probably head on over to Jean Iron's website to check out these articles by her and Ron Pittaway:
Subspecies of the Red-tailed Hawk (1993)
Dark Morph Red-tailed Hawks: calurus or abieticola? (2012)
Hawk Commentary (2016)

Another good article is Identifying Northern Red-tailed Hawks by Jon Ruddy (2014). Check the list of references in all of those articles for more reading!

Anyways, I point you to these information sources so you can read about these wonderful hawks before you see what I have to say/show...

Ken and I were down at Long Point for a quick tour of winter birds on Sunday morning. We weren't disappointed! We racked up 64 species in a morning of birding, highlighted by some good winter birds like Greater White-fronted Goose, Red-shouldered Hawk, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Hermit Thrush, Gray Catbird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Fox Sparrow and best of all, a dark morph Red-tailed Hawk. We weren't the finders of any of these birds but rather benefited from other birders being out and about in the days.

Anyways, here's the Red-tailed Hawk in question. For now, I have identified it as a dark morph calurus, sticking with the conventional wisdom that all dark morph birds in Ontario are of that species, but as Jean points out in her article, there could well be dark morph birds of the abieticola subspecies that no one has located in their remote breeding grounds yet!

Luke Berg also observed and photographed this bird on 14 January.

A gaggle of geese!

Every spring and fall hundreds of thousands of Snow and Canada Geese pass through easternmost Ontario on their migrations between the Arctic and the east coast. The sights can be dizzying with so many geese in the air, especially for southern Ontarians who think a flock of a couple thousand Canadas is a big one!

This spectacle has made headlines in Ontario this month because Jacques Bouvier found a Pink-footed Goose in a large flock of Greater Snow Geese near Moose Creek. This, being the first record for Ontario, has obviously created lots of attention on these amazing flocks of birds. Even without this rarity it is well worth the trip in spring or fall to witness all of the geese in eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

I have visited the area twice over the past month (helps to have inlaws in the area!!) and captured some images that give you a bit of a feel for the huge numbers, but to really do it justice you'll have to check it out yourself!

If you really want to do this one justice, open it up in your browser (click here) and then zoom in to see it at full size! PS: there is a Greater White-fronted Goose in that image somewhere...

Immature Greater White-fronted Goose

On a more recent visit, I checked the Moose Creek Sewage Lagoons and was happy to find a neck-collared Snow Goose. This is my third I have found in this general area. The other two were both banded on Bylot Island (where most "Greater" Snow Geese breed). Here's the collared goose I found this time:

I submitted the information to the Bird Banding lab (so that they and the bander have the information about where the bird has been re-sighted) and got back this information:

As you can see, this bird was also banded on Bylot Island, this time in 2013. By my calculations it has flown at least 22,000 km in it's life, probably much further!

I also found a nice big flock of Canada Geese closer to Morrisburg:

After a bit of searching I found two Cackling Geese mixed in! Did you see them in the above photo?? Here they are:

Still can't see them in the big image? Here, I have marked their location:

Always fun sifting through these huge flocks!!!

Great Canadian Birdathon - 2015 edition

The 2015 Burrell family birdathon was held on May 11...we had a great day birding the Pelee area with a dash to Blenheim and Lake St. Clair. Below is the [redacted] official write-up. If you want the full details, you'll have to put up some money for bird conservation :)

http://birdscanada.kintera.org/birdathon/mikeburrell

Monday, May 11th the 4 of us (Carol, Ken, Mike and Jim) were up before the sun to get the day started. We began our day by making a quick stop at the Days Inn to pick up displaying _______, before bee-lining it to the Visitor Centre at Point Pelee National Park and catching the first tram to the tip (6:00 am).

When we arrived at the tip it was calm, about 70% clouded and 17° C out: a good day to be out and about! Our first sign of good things to come was a ____ landing in front of us almost as soon as we got off the tram. Our luck continued as we approached the extreme Tip as there was a light “reverse migration” taking place. We set up here and spent the next two hours identifying ___ and a whole host of other species in flight. Our efforts were well-rewarded with flybys of ____, ____, and best of all a young male ____, not to mention many species of ____ and ____. By 8:00 am we decided to move north to search for a ____ that had been found earlier on the west beach footpath.

On our way north we stumbled upon a ____ and our first ____ of the day. A short while later we heard some shouting to our south, looked up and saw an ___ flying directly overhead with a ____! The ____ was photographed just minutes earlier at the very tip and was identified from those photos as a ____ - a new Ontario species for everyone except Ken. Feeling pretty good we traveled a bit further north and came across our target - a large crowd of birders was watching the ____ feeding at their feet! We grabbed some great looks and moved on to make room for more eager observers. By this time it was 9:00 am and we already had some great birds and a total of ___ species…it was time to move into the more sheltered parts of the park.

We walked in to the Woodland Nature Trail and quickly added an ____, ____, a few ____, and a handful of other species to boost our species total to ___.

After a nutrition break at the VC we made a quick check of the west beach to see if we could find a previously reported ____. As if on queue, before we even arrived at “the spot” it flew up and perched in the open for us to see!

From here it was decided to walk the trails around the VC and Tilden’s Woods. This area was also quite productive. Here we added an ____ calling and sunning itself, ____, and our first ____ and ____, plus great looks at a ____, bringing us to ___ species before the clock even struck noon.

At 12:30 we lunched at a picnic area on the west beach and rested. Mike and Ken decided they would walk an inland trail while Carol and Jim drove up 4 picnic areas and birded that area.  We managed to find ____, ____ and, finally, a ____. One final stop on a hunch at Northwest Beach to check behind the picnic shelters yielded ____, ____, ____ and an ____. Not bad for 45 minutes of work!

By 2:00 pm our bird list was growing slowly (sitting at ___) so we left the Park and headed for the Onion Fields just to the north. This area usually produces some interesting birds feeding among the newly planted and not tilled land. We did pretty good by adding ____, ____ (flew across the road in front of us and landed in a field beside us), ____ and best of all a breeding-plumaged ____ (a very rare ____). By this time the sky was beginning to cloud and the wind was picking up. The local weather station was warning of possible tornados. We headed straight for Hillman Marsh ahead of the weather.

The marsh is always good for shorebirds and waterfowl. It didn’t let us down! Here amongst the grasses and water we found ____, ____, 500 ____, ____ and ____, ____, ____ and ____. The rain was not far away but we were up to ___ species!

At 5:00 pm we made a short visit to Wheatley Harbour and then to Wheatley to get our pizza for supper. While eating and driving east we managed to spot a ____ just outside of Erieau, and then the storm hit with hard, driving rain. We made our way to Blenheim Sewage Lagoons. The rain let up and blue sky followed. At the Lagoons we did well again. Not long after entering Ken said “what’s that?”- we looked up and saw an ____ coming in from the north. It made several circles over the lagoons before heading south. With good views in the scope we were able to identify it as a ____ – not even new for the day!  Based on some feather damage on its right wing, we suspect this was the same individual we had seen some 10 hours earlier and 60 km away! Despite the ____ not being new for the day list we did add ____, ____, ____, ____ and ____ bringing our total to ___.

We headed northwest towards Lake St. Clair for our last few stops. Along Angler’s Line we found ____, ____ and ____. Our last productive stop was the St. Clair National Wildlife Refuge. It was quite windy and cooling quickly and unfortunately no ____ were calling. However, we still found ____, ____, ____, ____ and ____ to finish up.

It was a great day: ___ species, good company and lots of birdy conversation.

Thank you for sponsoring us and helping bird conservation. If you haven’t paid your pledge yet you may send us a cheque payable to Bird Studies Canada or pay online at http://birdscanada.kintera.org/birdathon/mikeburrell.

Species list:
[redacted]