Andaman Teal

The Andaman teal is a dark brown duck with buffy markings, a pale face and throat with a white ring round the eye, a bluish-grey bill and a red iris. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the Sunda teal. It is endemic to the Andaman archipelago in the Bay of Bengal and Great Coco Island in Myanmar (Wikipedia, general species account).

It feeds at night in rice fields, taking mainly molluscs and arthropods. The breeding season is July to October, and the nest is built of grass in reed patches, with a clutch of about nine eggs; it was once thought to breed in tree hollows but recent studies found no evidence of it. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority, with a Restricted range of about 4,100 km², a resident island endemic, and an inconclusive current trend (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).