LIFE

This mandarin duck in Central Park is a social media superstar

Jim Wright
Special to NorthJersey.com
New York magazine has called the Mandarin the city’s  “most eligible bachelor.”

Meet New York City’s newest superstar.  

Charismatic and flamboyant yet totally out of place, he has attracted hordes of far-flung tourists and local gawkers since he began giving free performances in Central Park last month.

The accidental celebrity is an exquisitely feathered Mandarin duck, native to China and Japan. Nicknamed Mandarin Patinkin by Gothamist, after the famous actor/singer, he has garnered a huge following and received national coverage. And for good reason.

(Gothamist reports the duck made brief appearances last month in Edgewater on a walkway along the Hudson River, as well as a park in North Bergen,)

“The male Mandarin is spectacular,” says Fred Virrazzi, a zoologist with Carteret-based National Biodiversity Park. “It's accepted as one of the most striking birds on Earth.”

According to Virrazzi, “Our reaction is visceral and viral. We are sharing a basic behavior with birds. We are compelled like the millions of past female Mandarins to this bewildering kaleidoscope of feathers.”

Small wonder, then, that on a recent Saturday, admirers from as far away as California and Australia flocked to the edge of the pond in the park’s southwest corner to see the duck that New York magazine has called “New York City’s most eligible bachelor.”  

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Mandarin ducks are typically shy, and this male tended to avoid people after he first mysteriously appeared in October but has grown comfortable with his surroundings, and on that recent Saturday he performed a one-duck show just off Fifth Avenue. 

At one point, he perched on a rock near the shore and spent several minutes preening his fine feathers for all to see, then swam up to the spectators so they could snap cellphone close-ups.

The other birds on the pond — a handsome but fairly common male wood duck, an American coot and multiple mallards —might as well have been invisible to the Tweeting hordes.    

“Social media by definition overacts to subjects that are exciting, so it’s hard to criticize or be surprised,” says Virrazzi, a Secaucus resident. “Some of the media has poorly explained the event as rare, inferring that the individual bird flew directly from East Asia, which is untrue. In fact, the bird is banded.”  

The male Mandarin duck is considered one of the most stunning birds in the world. That’s one reason why Mandarin Patinkin, as the Gothamist website dubbed the bird, has become a star.

That means he’s not a wild duck. Most likely he was released by the human who raised him, or he escaped.  And because park-goers like to feed birds, the Mandarin and other ducks on the pond are essentially free-range pets with communal owners, happy to stay put. 

In the metropolitan region, Mandarins in the wild are unusual but not unheard of. Over the past decade, they’ve appeared in smaller arenas, such as James J. Braddock Park in North Bergen, the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale, and Tappan Memorial Park in nearby Tappan, New York.

The Mandarin’s appearance in New York City is basically a feel-good story that arrived amid national calamities and the fractious midterm elections. But it does have its downsides, says Virrazzi, whose specialties include birds, insects and reptiles.

“This Mandarin has resulted in a frenzied mob of smartphone totters jockeying to get the millionth picture of this bird,” he says. “Naturally they feel a need to get closest to the animal as they trample the vegetation to death.”

How much longer the Mandarin will stay in Manhattan is hard to predict.

While one released non-native duck may not be cause for concern, the Mandarin duck population in several European countries mushroomed in the 1980s and 1990s after many of the ducks were released or they escaped into the wild. 

As a result, says Virrazzi, “there are more in Europe than their native East Asia. In Europe they compete for food and take over cavities to the detriment to native species.”

That’s why he considers the Central Park Mandarin “an example of what not to do — release exotic animals.”

Virrazzi does see a silver lining: “The Mandarin is a floating textbook on various behavioral and ecological aspects of animals. It's a sexy science project so it could turn on a few people to care a bit more about animals.” 

How much longer the Mandarin will stay in Manhattan is hard to predict. If the ponds in Central Park freeze, the duck may move to the Hudson River or farther south. 

“This latitude is not a problem, but open water and food are,” he says. “As prey dwindles in Central Park and the metro area, the chance of a raptor, a cat or other predator attacking it will increase. But the Mandarin is alert, so it has some minor chance of making it through the winter.”  

“The Bird Watcher” appears every other Thursday. Write to Jim at celeryfarm@gmail.com.