Birds
Mandarin Duck
Aix galericulata · also called mandarin
Few birds look as though they were designed by committee quite like a drake mandarin duck — orange side-whiskers, a purple chest with white pinstripes, a red bill, and two burnt-copper feathers standing up off the back like the sails of a tiny ship. When one turned up on a pond in Central Park in 2018, it made headlines around the world.
Overview
Aix galericulata is a small perching duck, about 41 to 49 cm long, native to the wooded rivers and lakes of eastern Asia. The gaudy male is unmistakable in breeding dress; the female is an elegant grey-brown bird with a white eye-ring and a pale stripe running back from the eye. Its closest relative is the North American wood duck, the only other member of the genus.
A duck in the trees
Mandarins are built for a life partly off the water. They have sharp claws for gripping bark, they perch readily in trees, and the female nests in a tree cavity up to 10 m above the ground. A day after hatching, the ducklings climb to the hole’s edge and jump, bouncing off the leaf litter and following their mother to water. In autumn the birds feed heavily on acorns and beech mast gathered on the forest floor.
Symbol and celebrity
Across China, Korea, and Japan, a pair of mandarin ducks is a centuries-old emblem of love and marriage, and carved pairs are given at weddings — even though the birds usually change mates each year. In Britain, escapes from wildfowl collections have produced a naturalised population of several thousand, now counted as globally important as the species declines in its Asian range.
Status
The mandarin duck is Least Concern. The native East Asian population has fallen with the clearance of mature riverside forest, but introduced populations in Britain and western Europe are stable or increasing, and nest boxes readily make up for lost natural cavities.
Mandarin Duck: common questions
Why is the male mandarin duck so colourful?
The drake's plumage is a product of sexual selection, in which females over many generations have favoured the most striking males and driven the evolution of ever more elaborate ornament. The result is a bird with orange whisker-like cheek fans, a purple breast bordered by white bars, a red bill, and a pair of enlarged copper feathers on the wings that stand up like sails. None of it helps him survive; it exists to win a mate. Outside the breeding season the drake moults into a drab, hen-like eclipse plumage and becomes hard to tell from the female except for his red bill.
Do mandarin ducks really mate for life?
Not usually, despite the cultural symbolism. Mandarin pairs form strong bonds during the breeding season and the drake stays close to the female through incubation, which is more attentive than many ducks. But most birds take a different partner the following year, and the East Asian tradition of the mandarin pair as an emblem of lifelong fidelity is based on their obvious devotion within a season rather than on long-term data. The image remains powerful in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art and weddings regardless of the biology.
How did mandarin ducks end up living wild in Britain?
They were brought to Britain as ornamental birds for private wildfowl collections and park lakes, and from the early twentieth century onward some escaped or were deliberately released. Because Britain has plenty of the wooded lakes and rivers the species likes, mild winters, and few natural predators of tree-nesting ducks, the escapees bred and spread. The feral population now runs to several thousand birds, mainly in southern and central England, and is large enough that international assessments treat it as a meaningful share of the world total, especially as numbers fall in the native range.
Where do mandarin ducks nest?
In holes in trees, typically old woodpecker cavities or natural hollows, often standing over water but sometimes well back in the woods and up to about 10 m off the ground. The female lays around 9 to 12 eggs and incubates them alone for roughly a month. Soon after the ducklings hatch she flies down and calls, and the tiny birds jump from the cavity to the ground, cushioned by their light weight and downy bodies, then walk with her to the nearest water. Nest boxes readily substitute for natural cavities, which has helped both native and introduced populations.