A Correction To "It Was A March Beautiful Day"

It was a beautiful day.

But I called this bird a Eurasian Teal.

I shared this image with a birder friend of ours and she said that it wasn't a Eurasian teal, because Eurasian teal don't exist.

I had called it a Eurasian teal for the following reason, cut and pasted from an email:

"Also she mentioned that I had taken pictures of what I thought was a Eurasian Teal.

Actually I didn’t think that there was such a thing, but the bird that I had a picture of didn’t look like a widgeon – starting with the fact that it was smaller than a widgeon - but it did look like a teal, and was the right size.

so I did a search and got this image gallery".

That notwithstanding, our friend knows a lot more about birds than my wife and I do, so she and I - my wife and I - in tandem did more research.

My wife got the prize for research that closed the case:

"We were puzzled about Teals, so I went to Sibley and discovered that there is a Eurasian (Common) Teal that’s a subspecies of Green-winged Teal.  It’s a rare but regular visitor from Eurasia.  They hang out among flocks of Green-winged Teal and look very much like the Green-winged with the following difference:  The breeding male has a horizontal white scapular stripe, but no vertical white shoulder bar, which is an identifier of an adult breeding Green-winged Teal (Noel’s bird has that).  Interestingly, an American x Eurasian intergrade adult male has both a white bar on its breast and a white stripe on the scapular. 

So, you’re correct.  Noel’s bird is definitely a Green-winged Teal."

I hope this has made your lives in covid-ville more enjoyable than they might otherwise have been.