Yellow-billed Pintail

About the Yellow-billed Pintail

The yellow-billed pintail (Anas georgica) is a South American dabbling duck of the genus Anas with three described subspecies. The yellow-billed pintail was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the ducks, geese, and swans in the genus Anas and coined the binomial name Anas georgica. Gmelin based his description on the "Georgia duck" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his A General Synopsis of Birds. The naturalist Joseph Banks had provided Latham with a water-colour drawing of the duck by Georg Forster who had accompanied James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The watercolour was painted in 1775 in South Georgia. This picture is now the holotype for the species and is held by the Natural History Museum in London. The genus name Anas is the Latin word for a duck.

Three subspecies are recognised: † A. g. niceforoi Wetmore & Borrero, 1946 – east-central Colombia (extinct) A. g. spinicauda Vieillot, 1816 – south Colombia to south Argentina, south Chile, and the Falkland Islands A. g.... Wikipedia →