Cinnamon teal

The adult male has a cinnamon-red head and body with a brown back, a red eye and a dark bill. The adult female has a mottled brown body, a pale brown head, brown eyes and a grey bill and is very similar in appearance to a female blue-winged teal; however, its overall color is richer, the lores, eye line, and eye ring are less distinct. Its bill is longer and more spatulate. Male juvenile resembles a female cinnamon or blue-winged teal but their eyes are red.^[2][3] They are 16 in (41 cm) long, have a 22-inch (560 mm) wingspan, and weigh 14 oz (400 g).^[3] They have 2 adult molts per year and a third molt in their first year.^[3]

• 
  Female Spatula cyanoptera septentrionalium
• 
  Male (left) and female
• 
  Male

Their breeding habitat is marshes and ponds in western United States and extreme southwestern Canada, and are rare visitors to the eastern United States.^[3] One young male duck was spotted in Grimsby, Ontario, and became a tourist attraction due to its rarity outside of western Canada.^[4] Cinnamon teal generally select new mates each year. They are migratory and most winter in northern South America and the Caribbean,^[5] generally not migrating as far as the blue-winged teal. Some winter in California and southwestern Arizona.^[2] Two subspecies of cinnamon teal reside within the Andes of South America. The smaller S. c. cyanoptera is widespread within low elevations (<1000m) such as the coast of Peru and southern Argentina, whereas the larger subspecies S. c. orinomus occupies elevations of 3500–4600 meters in the central Andes.^[6]

Cinnamon teal are dabbling ducks, taking most of their food at or near the surface of a body of water; a breeding population studied in Arizona ate primarily seeds (especially Carex sp.), aquatic fly larvae, and snails.^[7] They mainly eat plants; their diet may also include molluscs and aquatic insects.^[8] They can also feed like northern shovelers, following each other in tight groups as they slowly feed across an area.^{[citation needed]}

They are known to interbreed with blue-winged teals,^[2] which are very close relatives.

Subspecies are:

• S. c. septentrionalium (Oberholser, 1906) northern cinnamon teal breeds from British Columbia to northwestern New Mexico, and they winter in northwestern South America.^[9]
• S. c. tropica (Snyder & Lumsden, 1951) tropical cinnamon teal occurs in the Cauca Valley and Magdalena Valley in Colombia.^[9]
• S. c. borreroi (Snyder & Lumsden, 1951) Borrero's cinnamon teal (possibly extinct) occurs in the eastern Andes of Colombia with records of apparently resident birds from northern Ecuador.^[9] It is named for Colombian ornithologist José Ignacio Borrero.
• S. c. orinoma (Snyder & Lumsden, 1951) Andean cinnamon teal occurs in the Altiplano of Peru, northern Chile and Bolivia.^[9]
• S. c. cyanoptera (Vieillot, 1816) Argentine cinnamon teal occurs in southern Peru, southern Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands.^[9]