The Ringed Teal ... a Duck for the Softbill Aviary

Abstract

At the San Antonio Zoo's Hixon Tropical Bird House, a darkened circular walkway separates a ring of sunlit, landscaped, glass-fronted aviaries from a planted rotunda. Opened in the 1960s, this building has always held a wonderful collection and I was not disappointed at my first visit in June 1984. In beautiful exhibits were breeding White-breasted Bald Crows (Picathartes gymnocephalus), the first Giant Pittas and Pagodah Mynahs I'd seen, African Pygmy Kingfishers nesting in an artificial mudbank, a native Black-chinned Hummingbird and Yellow-rumped Warbler, a small flock of Saffron-crowned Tanagers (Tangara xanthocephala), and many other species. A bird I've never seen again was a Carrniol's Tanager (Chlorothraupis carmioli), from Central and South America. As I admired this large sombre bird, which shared its display with Andean Cocks-of-the-Rock and Blond-crested Woodpeckers Celeus Jlavescens), Assistant Director Ernest Roni, who was escorting me through the house, pointed with delight at a female Ringed Teal escorting a line of ducklings out of the undergrowth to the stream at the front of the exhibit.

The Ringed Teal, which breeds in tropical Argentina and Paraguay, and ranges into Brazil, Bolivia, and Uruguay, is primarily a forest bird (Delacour, 1956;Johnsgard, 1978). It is frequently perched in trees and nests in tree-holes and the bulky stick nests of Monk Parrots (Delacour, 1956; Johnsgard, 1978; and Todd, 1979). Being a little duck, a fourth the mass of a Mallard (Todd, 1979), it is thus superbly adapted to a freeflight existence in a tropical aviary, indoors or out. As it does not dive (Delacour, 1956; Johnsgard, 1978), it does quite well in shallow water. To its obvious advantage as an ornamental bird, the Ringed Teal does not undergo an eclipse plumage, so notable in Wood and Mandarin Ducks and Northern Hemisphere Teal. The drake's wonderful combination of reddish-chestnut, pale peach, metallic green, white, grey, and black lines and trout speckles, is retained throughout the year, affording a pleasing contrast to the attractively subtle brown and white pattern of the female. As the "ringed" pattern of the male's head is often not very obvious, I agree with zoo historian Marvin Jones that the German name "Red-shouldered Teal" is far more appropriate.

It was to Germany that the first Ringed Teal were exported from South America, arriving at Zoologischer Garten Berlin, in the comparatively late year of 1907. The year is usually given as 1908, but the accompanying picture is dated a year earlier by avicultural historian Heinz-Sigurd Raethel (1979). Berlin's first specimens, regarded as treasured rarities in what was then the largest collection of birds in the world, were all males (Delacour 1956). Delacour (1956) further records that others shortly arrived in German private collections, the London Zoo, and the legendary aviaries of F.E. Blaauw at Gooilust, Holland.

Though Blaauw shortly bred large numbers of Ringed Teal, the first success appears to have occurred in Germany, as Delacour (1956) notes that young birds were offered on German price-lists in 1911. British successes soon followed; the great statesman, Lord Grey of Fallodon (Teddy Roosevelt's birding buddy), doing particularly well. Delacour (1956) tells us that the Ringed Teal was Lord Grey's favorite waterfowl.

The German aviculturist Hartmut Kolbe (1979) states that few if any of these ducks appear to have been exported between 1910 and 1950, and the European captive population was displaying inbreeding depression by the 1930s. Delacour (1956), who bred them at Cleres in the '30s, states that none of the captive birds survived the Second World War. No Ringed Teal appear to have arrived in North America to that point.

The species does not appear to have been bred again until 1955, when six females were hatched at the Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge, England (Delacour 1956). Aside from Slim bridge, only one other collection is listed in the breeding records of the first five volumes of the International Zoo Yearbook, covering 1959 to 1963; The New York Zoological Park (Bronx Zoo) hatched Ringed Teal in 1962 and 1963 (Zoological Society of London 1961-65). Through the 1960s, this bird remained a rarity in collections. When the San Diego Zoo obtained its first pair in December 1966, a photograph was prominently featured in the zoo's magazine (Anon. 1967). Marvin Jones, San Diego's registrar, informed me that zoo records indicate only that these birds came from a Mr. Lintz, about whom I have found nothing further, and their subsequent history is not recorded. San Diego Zoo did not obtain additional birds until 1974, when a pair arrived from the Canadian dealer Ken Chisolm, and 1975, when another pair was obtained from the Miami Rare Bird Farm. Marvin Jones believes the 1975 pair were most likely wild birds. The San Diego Wild Animal Park also received birds about this time.