OSLO BIRDER: Baikal Teal

Baikal Teal is a popular species, popular with birders and popular with keepers of wildfowl. It is both rare and beautiful and quite a plastic bird. It only received the most minimal of entries in Birds of the Western Palearctic with no picture or description and just a brief text with the following summing up how it was viewed “but origins of a good many suspect since species commonly kept in waterfowl collections”. But a bird shot in Denmark in 2005 was, through the application of the dark art of isotope analysis, found to have come from the breeding grounds in Siberia and this then prompted a British specimen from 1906 to be similarly analysed and this was also judged to be a genuine vagrant. Since then the flood gates have opened and records of this bird in Northern Europe (including reassessed historic ones) now usually get the nod unless there are obvious signs of it being a fence hopper (plastic rings).

Many of the birds though do exhibit behavioural traits that suggest a more local origin though and the species is kept in Norway in private collections with the birds unringed and fully winged.

A male turned up in western Norway for a day last December, seen at close range one could wonder where it had come from but what was assumed to be the same bird was then refound in the same area in February where it gave the impression of being far warier but that could also be explained by the nature of the site it had chosen. What has widely been assumed to be the same bird (but why?) then turned up in southeastern Norway in April and to my mind did not act like a very wild bird but was very popular. What does reasonably seem to be the same bird was then tracked moving northwards in Norway being seen at 3 different sites with the last being the rarity magnet island of Røst at the end of May and where again it showed at very close range. As the bird(s) was unringed though it sits safely on people lists although I didn’t find myself tempted to travel the couple of hours needed to see it.

Yesterday news came through of female plumaged Baikal Teal very close to Oslo. The lake is urban and not a known site for dabbling ducks other than Mallard but does attract rare gulls. It also has a history with plastic ducks with a series of bread eating Mandarins and also a White-cheeked Pintail. Pictures of the bird showed it to be unringed and full winged, i.e good as gold so I made the 20 minutes journey through the rush hour traffic and found it being watched by a handful of birders. It was perhaps warier than the Mallards it was with but it was no problem getting close to. Whilst watching it I thought it was an adult female but on checking my pictures and available literature and online resources I think it has to be an adult male in eclipse plumage due to some long scapulars and a few grey feathers on the flanks. I had expected that by this late date it would have more obvious signs of being a male but clearly not. It being an adult male raises the distinct possibility of it being the bird from the spring or could be a recent escape but it will not be a bird that has arrived from distant breeding grounds this autumn.

Finding and identifying a Baikal Teal in female plumage is no mean feat so congratulations to the finder Geir Høen and let us hope it hangs around long enough so show the plumage that makes it such a popular duck.

Baikal Teal (gulkinnand). In female plumage the white spot by the bill is a key character. The long scapular and warm plumage point to this being a male in eclipse plumage. From what I can make out the pattern of the feathering on the chest is also indicative of a male in eclipse rather than a female