{"id":160396,"date":"2024-06-17T06:09:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T12:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=160396"},"modified":"2024-06-17T06:55:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T12:55:02","slug":"a-cinnamon-teal-behavior-id-never-seen-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/17\/a-cinnamon-teal-behavior-id-never-seen-before\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cinnamon Teal Behavior I’d Never Seen Before"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least not up close. And maybe never.<\/p>\n

Five days ago at Bear River MBR I was photographing other birds on a large pond when I heard a commotion on the canal flowing into the pond. It was caused by a large, far-away group of over a dozen cantankerous Cinnamon Teals who would fight for a few seconds, pause, and then fight again. Most of the teals were males but there were a few females sprinkled in and I suspect the fights were caused by unattached males trying to horn in on females that already had a mate.<\/p>\n

While they were fighting they were far away and intermittently hidden by vegetation so I just watched them, mostly through my lens. After a few minutes, one mated pair of teals had had enough of the tension and fighting so they took off and disappeared to the southeast.<\/p>\n

A few moments later, during a particularly intense bout of fighting, another pair took off but this pair headed my way. To my surprise, they landed on the pond right in front of me and only a few feet away. Their behavior immediately after landing was fascinating and I was able to document it with many photos. There was some out of focus vegetation between me and the teals but given the unusual behavior I documented, and how close they were to me, I can completely ignore it.<\/p>\n

All photos are presented in the order they were taken.<\/p>\n

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This is the first photo I got after they landed. They were butted up against each other, breast to breast, and alternately head-pumping and vocalizing.<\/p>\n

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Their vocalizing surprised me because Cinnamon Teals are relatively quiet compared to other dabbling ducks. They vocalize infrequently.<\/p>\n

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They seemed to take turns with the head-pumping. One bird would extend its neck and head vertically and then…<\/p>\n

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the other one would do the same. Often they were vocalizing simultaneously. I found it interesting that the hen kept her wings and tail pointed upward during the entire performance but the drake didn’t follow suit.<\/p>\n

This behavior lasted for a surprisingly long time so I got dozens of photos of it but many of the photos were similar or almost exact copies of each other so I’m leaving most of them out.<\/p>\n

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After quite a while I could tell that the intensity of the performance was beginning to wind down. The drake almost climbed up on her breast with his breast before he…<\/p>\n

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swam in front of his mate to her other side.<\/p>\n

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And then they kissed.<\/p>\n

Nah, Cinnamon Teals don’t kiss. Or do they?<\/p>\n

I can only guess at the meaning of this truly fascinating behavior. It was my impression that they were reaffirming\/cementing their bond after the unwanted attention from an unattached male over on the canal. After this photo was taken they settled down to pretty normal behavior for mated Cinnamon Teals.<\/p>\n

But the big fight on the canal was still occurring so I watched them through my lens for a short while. Eventually a third pair of mated teals had had enough of all the excitement and took off to escape it.<\/p>\n

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This time I got a few shots of them in flight. I sure wish they’d been closer.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least not up close. And maybe never. (8 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,5,334,357,394,395,391],"tags":[49,7490,6138,140,146,4552,7491,6849,311,7464],"class_list":["post-160396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-cinnamon-teals","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-miscellaneous","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-cinnamon-teal-pair-bond-maintenance-display","tag-drake-and-hen","tag-fighting","tag-flight","tag-head-pumping","tag-kissing","tag-spatula-cyanoptera","tag-utah-2","tag-vocalizing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/cinnamon-teals-1313-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-FJ2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160396"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160432,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160396\/revisions\/160432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}