Back a few years ago I thought this was a blue winged teal when I shot it here in northern Maine.It flew in with a flock of blue winged teal.I shot 3 and realized this one looked different when I retrieved them.

Cool bird

Have a look at drake cinnamon teal Bruce. Way out of normal range in Maine. Western bird.

May not have full breeding plumage yet or might be drake hybrid cinnamon x blue winged teal.

Not often that cinnamon teal are in plumage during hunting season.

Yep turned out to be a cinnamon teal I think anyways.We get some birds close to fuller plumage and some look still like females.I was reading on it after this happened and found out the most birds fly north to south,south to north but for some reason a few fly west to east and viscera.They fly across flyzones.Found it very interesting.

More than likely an escaped pen bird someone did not pin their forewing feathers when young
if you look closely the " finger" feathers are not spread on that bird in flight.

I saw one around the 1 Nov waterfowling, some non breeders move up with Green winged teal to molt in the high boreal forest and come down as the ice is forming in the fall

Thats cool. Are those rare or just rare for Maine? Have you heard about the tame farm raised mallards contaminating the wild mallard population north of the mason dixon line?

Rare to Maine.Never was much for mallards around here Now they are everywhere.