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Males have a “love call” that is a soft drawn out whistle, which the female generally answers with a harsh quacking sound.
photo: Tom Gillespie
Characteristics: Ringed Teals are very graceful. They fly, swim and dive well and will readily perch in
trees and on logs for long periods of time. Male Ringed Teals have a black band over the crown and hind neck that forms a half collar. The head is pale gray finely streaked with black. The mantle is olive gray, and scapulars are chestnut red. The back, rump, tail, and wings are black, the latter with a white patch on the secondary coverts and green mirror on the secondaries. They have a dark olive brown breast with buffy pink spots the tone of human skin. The abdomen is gray with the flanks being very firmly lined with gray and black spots. Iris is brown, bill is bluish and the legs are pink.
This species is sexually dimorphic and the females are brown with the same dark back and tail and wings, but are browner throughout with broad white eyebrows and white lines behind the eyes. Throat, cheeks and sides of the upper neck also lined with white and the underparts are white banded with brown. The bill is a duller gray with a black saddle.
Immature birds look like the females but without the white on the faces and flanks. Downy chicks are brownish gray above and white below with a large white eyebrow and a dark line through the eye. They also have light patches on the back and wings. The bill is gray and the legs are gray fleshy colored. Males have a “love call” that is a soft drawn out whistle, which the female generally answers with a harsh quacking sound. As they look like Teals but in this call and other behaviors resemble the pochards they have been a difficult species to classify. They have no eclipse plumage.
The Ringed Teal is found in South Bolivia, Brazil south to Paraguay, Uruguay and Northern Argentina. It prefers tropical wooded areas and seems to be always scarce. Very little is known about their wild habits.
Diet: Like most ducks they feed on vegetation as well as their seeds and chutes and small fish, invertebrates and insects. At the N.C. Zoo they are offered Zeigler Avian pellets mixed with Mazuri Small Bird Particles mixed with chopped greens that vary with the season. They also have access to a wide variety of tropical forest plants on exhibit as well as live bugs including crickets, mealworms and waxworms and are offered lettuce in their pool twice a week.
Reproduction: Ringed Teals resemble the pochards in their courtship displays. Along with the love call mentioned earlier, both males and females will chase each other as well as other pairs in a mock pursuit. Males will also become very territorial of their mates and nests. Pair bonds are strong and possibly permanent. They typically nest in cavities built by other birds or occurring naturally and lay 5-13 stony white eggs that are incubated by the female only for 23 days. Females will often lay eggs in the nests of other individuals as well to insure survival of their genes. Males do assist in rearing the young however and are often more attentive to the chicks then the females.
Environmental Connection: One of the most obvious problems for ducks in the wild is the popular sport of hunting. In Brazil, due to the lack of laws governing this “sport”, they are killed by the tons, even being able to use special cannons loaded with lead shot that can drop a whole flock. 8000 ha of marshes for ducks and other aquatic species were reported to be under the control of hunters in 1973. Many are purchased and or rented for sport. The tradition of burning on ranches to clear more land often coincides with the ducks flightless period during molts. In 1964, 60,000 ducks were killed on just one ranch in Amapa. Besides the creation of desperately needed reserves and national parks as well as the provision for monitoring and preserving the flora and fauna of these parks, it has been suggested that some form of financial incentive be found for landowners both private and organizational to maintain their marshes as natural breeding grounds. Similar benefits could arise from proper management of ponds, by keeping aquatic plants growing around their edges in the shallow reservoirs. In this way it would be possible to partially make up for other wetlands lost by filling or draining for agriculture and other reasons. We must also educate the people on the importance of wetlands for maintaining natural equilibrium, and show them it is as indispensable as the forests. We must reconsider our economic, recreational, educational, scientific and aesthetic values with reference to wetlands, but starry-eyed conservation will get us nowhere if we detach this from the basic interests of the community. International agreements will have to be made as well to protect anatids as many cross three or four international boundaries in just one season.
References:
- Delacour, Jean – 1956 – The Waterfowl of the World, Vol.2. Arco Publishing Co., N.Y.
- Emett, Blake – 1977 – Manual of Neotropical Birds, Vol. 1, University of Chicago Press
- Sick, Helmut – 1993 – Birds of Brazil, Princeton Press
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N.C. Zoo is a member institution of AZA and an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, William G. Ross Jr. Secretary; Michael F. Easley, Governor. A part of the North Carolina Government portal.
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