The Story
This is a Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors) that I photographed at La Florida near Bogotá, Colombia on June 29, 2017. It is one of the smaller dabbling ducks and breeds in North America. It breeds in marshes and ponds. The male has a grayish-blue head with a white crescent in front of the eye, and both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts and a green speculum. La Florida is a wetland and park known as the Parque Metropolitano La Florida, near the Bogotá River.
I photographed it with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 160. IUCN lists the Blue-winged Teal as Least Concern with an increasing population, and Bogotá had about 150,000 hectares of wetlands in 1940, of which only about 1,500 remain.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors) belongs to the family Anatidae (Ducks, Geese, and Waterfowl) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2021), with the population trend listed as increasing. Source: IUCN Red List