Photo by Michael Gäbler via Wikipedia Commons
According to recent news reports, a duck hunter in Long Island may have killed a mandarin duck. Yes, a mandarin duck—a species that, according to the CornellLab, is native to Asia, migrating from breeding grounds in southeast Russia, northeast China, Korea, and Japan to wintering grounds in eastern China and Japan. Mandarin ducks look similar to wood ducks, but mandarin drakes have striking orange heads.
Every so often, mandarin ducks are bagged by lucky hunters in North America. For instance, in 2022, a South Carolina duck hunter killed one on Lake Hartwell. Experts weren’t sure where that duck came from. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there is a small feral population of mandarin ducks in Sonoma County, California. Even in that region, it’s exceedingly rare for a mandarin duck to fly into a hunter’s spread.
This fall, the Long Island mandarin duck became a sensation among birders after it was spotted at a neighborhood pond in Stony Brook, a town that is about 50 miles from Manhattan. In mid-December, local papers reported about unconfirmed social media posts indicating that an anonymous hunter had killed the bird.
According to a Patch article, the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is “probing” the issue. The animal welfare group is one of several that wanted to bring the exotic bird into an animal shelter, claiming—without any clear substantiation—that it was an abandoned pet.
“It’s very disheartening because there was a whole group of people ready, spending their days, spending their nights out here trying to save this duck’s life,” John Di Leonardo, executive director of Humane Long Island, told News12 Long Island.
That said, Split Reed has not been able to confirm if the duck had actually been bagged, nor if it was the only mandarin duck in the area. Suffolk SPCA Chief Roy Gross told the Patch that it’s possible photos circulating on social media showing a dead mandarin duck could be made with AI or taken elsewhere.
Meanwhile, an official from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation says that the agency has been notified of “the potential take of the non-native Mandarin duck that was recently seen in the Stony Brook/East Setauket area…Based on the information available, there is currently no evidence indicating illegal hunting in this matter. A free-roaming Mandarin duck in New York State would be considered a wild duck, according to DEC hunting regulations. A properly licensed waterfowl hunter is allowed to hunt wild ducks throughout the legally established season and include them in their bag limit.”
If Split Reed is able to get ahold of the hunter who may have bagged the rare bird, we’ll share the full story of the hunt. Until then, it’s a lot of hoopla over one bird, albeit a staggeringly rare and beautiful one.