VA Birders,
Jane Grawe, Anne Strahan, and I went to Huntley Meadows Park, Fairfax
Co., Sunday afternoon, Jan. 22, to look for the EURASIAN (COMMON) TEAL
previously
reported there. We were not disappointed. We arrived at the park about 2:15
pm, and we saw the bird about an hour later. We looked first from the high
point on the boardwalk, but we did not find it there, so we continued on to the
observation tower, where Howard Elitzak had just located it with his spotting
scope. I quickly got my scope on it too, and we had excellent scope views of
this bird until we left a little after 3:30 pm. The teal was out in the
middle of the big (main) pond, keeping company with the many (AMERICAN)
GREEN-WINGED TEAL there. To get good looks at this duck, a scope is a must; I
never got
a satisfactory view with my binoculars. NOTE: I am using the name "Eurasian
(Common) Teal" as used by David Sibley in "The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of
Eastern North America."
During the roughly half hour we watched the Eurasian Teal, we looked
carefully for any sign of a vertical white slash mark or bar at its shoulder,
but
we found none. The horizontal white stripe (actually it looked more like a
pale buffy color to me--not as pure white as the bar on the Green-winged Teal
in
the afternoon light) above a black line on its side was very clear when the
bird was sitting on the water. It really made this bird stand out from the
other teal.
Other birds of note at Huntley Meadows Sunday afternoon were GADWALL,
NORTHERN PINTAIL, & NORTHERN SHOVELER, an immature BALD EAGLE which flew over
and
put up all the ducks (after the eagle disappeared, the teal returned and
landed at about the same spot where they had been before.), and an AM. KESTREL.
We also looked for the Greater White-fronted Goose among all the CANADA GEESE
there, but we did not find it. However, most of the geese were at least
partially hidden in vegetation, so it could easily have been missed.
One final note: The latest issue of "Virginia Birds" (Vol.2, No.
1--Summer Records June - July 2005) includes the Virginia Avian Records
Committee
(VARCOM) Review List of Virginia birds. "Eurasian Green-winged Teal [Common
Teal]" is listed in the "Statewide" category, which means that all records for
this bird need to be documented for VARCOM.
Good birding,
Val Kitchens
Arlington, VA
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