Rare Eurasian Teal

Eurasian Teal

The Eurasian Teal also know as a Common Teal is a subspecies of the Green-winged Teal. It is considered to be a very rare bird for our West Coast. A few people have reported seeing one at the Fairview Wetlands here in Salem, and  Jeanette and I have made several failed attempts to try find it. Yesterday we fianlly got lucky.  The reason I say "lucky" is there are only slight differences in this Teal compared to the more numerous Green-winged Teal. There are approxamately 60 Green-winged Teals swimming around in and out of view on the ponds at Fairview Wetlands, which means you have to check out a lot of Green-winged Teals to find the single Eurasian Teal. You can see in the above photo the Eurasian Teal lacks a vertical white bar at the shoulder and has a horizonal white stripe on the wing  as compared to the Green-winged Teal in the lower photo.

 Green-winged Teal