Fulvous Whistling-Duck (Dendrocygna bicolor)

A small flock of migrants along the Laguna Madre Trail were grounded by the weather and were gone the next day. This species is dependent on rice cultivation where they have declined as a consequence of pesticide use. In Texas they are still local summer breeders to coastal regions but in California, they have completely disappeared. This species is distributed across three continents in widely disjunct populations, yet surprisingly, no subspecies and no geographic variation in size or plumage coloration has been documented. Formerly called "Fulvous Tree-Duck."