Mandarin Duck

The male mandarin duck looks painted rather than feathered: an orange sail of wing feathers, a lilac chest, and two upstanding orange ‘whisker’ feathers that frame a white-and-black face. Females are gray-brown with a neat white eye-ring, blending into tree hollows where they nest. Remarkably, mandarins perch and nest in trees, sometimes 9 m or more above the ground, and the ducklings leap down to the forest floor within a day of hatching. Native to East Asia, the species also thrives in feral populations around Britain and Western Europe.