A rare, colorful bird has become a Utah celebrity. How did he get here?

Layton • A rare bird has made its way to Utah — and it’s not the first, according to the Division of Wildlife Resources.

This particular Mandarin duck has become a frequent flyer a Layton duck pond over the past few weeks, an ocean away from its natural habitat in East Asia, according to eBird, a database of bird sightings managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The colorful but typically elusive type of waterfowl has returned to this same pond for years, with different documented Mandarin duck sightings dating back to at least 2002.

Adam Brewerton, a wildlife conservation biologist with DWR, said that while the birds are rare in the North American wild, they’re a common enough domestic duck that, over time, enough have seemed to escape and live out their lives locally to create an “established breeding population” along the Wasatch Front.

A Mandarin duck made a similar stir in New York City in 2018, when the so-called “hot duck” appeared at Central Park to the excitement of birders and tourists alike.

Brewerton belives most of Utah’s Mandarin ducks are a result of the “escapee” population, instead of being blown off course over the Pacific Ocean — especially because they don’t tend to migrate over long distances.

The birds can have a lifespan of about six years in the wild, and may seem a little less spectacular each year around early summer, when molting season begins and they start to shed their pretty plumage, according to Audubon.

Although Mandarin ducks aren’t native to Utah, their presence doesn’t concern the wildlife division. If enough were present, Brewerton said, they could dilute the genetics of other local bird populations, because the ducks can cross-breed with wood ducks and mallard ducks. But that doesn’t happen very often.

Wood ducks are native to North America, but are also a rare sighting in Utah, Brewerton said. The birds typically prefer habitats that aren’t common in the Beehive State, Brewerton added, like wooded swamps and freshwater wetlands.

But Jamie Canfield, a hobby photographer from Ogden, noticed that Layton’s newest bird celebrity has become friendly with a female wood duck.

“He’s a challenging subject in Layton,” Canfield said, noting that she had to visit the pond for about a week before she was able to photograph him. “They’re very surrounded by trees, and Mandarin ducks in particular like to stay kind of burrowed under the base of trees. And he’s got a little wood duck girlfriend who just tells him what to do and when to do it. And he listens.”

On Feb. 3, duck quacks and goose honks echoed through Layton’s duck pond as local photographers kept a watchful eye from the edge of South Fork Kays Creek. That morning, three photographers sat by the water amid the mud and bird droppings, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Mandarin duck — but, at least until the afternoon, a pair of male wood ducks were instead the stars of the show.

“I’m actually more excited about a wood duck than I am about a Mandarin duck,” Brewerton said. “The wood ducks are like the wild native version, and the Mandarin duck’s like an escaped domestic, typically.”

Other rare bird sightings — like a gilded flicker and a gray hawk — have also been documented in Utah recently. Both of these birds usually stick to the southwest U.S. and Mexico, according to eBird.

Still, this year doesn’t seem to stand out to Brewerton in terms of rare bird sightings. He often monitors eBird’s rarity alerts and local rare bird alerts to see when reports may warrant the wildlife division’s interest — such as if a large amount of birds suddenly relocated to Utah, which could indicate a population shift.

“Mountain chains, valleys, river systems — like these really large-scale features across the landscape — are landmarks that birds will use during their migrations,” Brewerton said. “And then the Great Salt Lake, with all the birds that either stop-over during migration, or birds that come to the lake to overwinter, or birds that come to the lake to breed in the summers — there’s just a lot of bird traffic going into and out of the state of Utah.”

Rare birds like the Mandarin duck provide people with a great opportunity to get to know nature and the environment around them, Brewerton added, which is “always going to be a good thing.”

“He’s just a gorgeous subject the way that he’s the most vibrant duck out there — and he knows it, too,” Canfield said. “They’re arguably the prettiest ducks out there. I saw him and I got obsessed with him. ... He’s a little celebrity.”

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