A Mandarin tale
Here, a writer wonders how to write about a duck. It’s been days of this. This thinking. Ruminating. This reading up on and watching videos about. This deciding how to present.
How to make it interesting.
Even beautiful.
How to do this duck justice. How just to capture it.
But maybe this is the point — the elusiveness of a perfect way to describe so lovely a creature. Maybe some things cannot be explained away or captured just so, cannot be given any real justice with words. Maybe one just has to remain in awe of such things. Yes, yes maybe this is it, how to begin. With awe, and the struggle to understand. Maybe this is what people talk about when they talk about God.
Maybe.
This duck, he’d come in for a landing on the pond near the old water well. The same well I used to come to with my grandfather, glass bottles in tow, on warm summer days such as these. Back then I was a boy on holiday from the States. Now I was a man out for a little walk, and my grandfather was twenty years gone, and the well closed up and tagged with some graffiti. Then the duck came dropping out of the sky.
There were two ducks, actually. And they landed and they slid across the moss-strewn water, one directly behind the other. The one in front looked more ordinary, more gray. The one in back pecked at the tail of the other, as if to push it along further, faster. This caused a momentary ruckus, though not a quack. It was a different sound that came from these ducks, more a weep. But soon both were quiet again, and slowing, and coming up then onto the cement bank of the pond to dry off.
And this is when some of us nearby, and some not, began to notice: maybe these were not ordinary ducks.
On the bench nearby, that young couple remained deep in conversation, eyes fixed only on each other. On a bench further back, an old woman sat stoically with a cane in one hand and her eyes closed but up into the sun, basking. On another, two women were chatting while in front of them a rambunctious young girl chased away some of the pigeons that had been bobbing their heads closer and curiously.
A usual Sunday, really. Except maybe for those two ducks. Pigeons and crows and more ordinary ducks — mallards, I suppose they’re called — they roamed about there always. The mallards, drifting along in the shallow water or resting in the shade over on the grass. The pigeons, of course the pigeons were always coming a little closer, being city people too, cement dwellers more shy of the water. And the crows, the crows were always dropping in from nowhere whenever bread was dropped, flexing and flying off with some of the loot.
But the two ducks, which had just dropped in on this scene? They remained near the water’s edge, still keeping to themselves, still drying. Only later, once home, would I learn what they were: Mandarin ducks. And that they came from Asia. And were “quite shy” birds. And that the two there at the pond’s edge must have been mates, for Mandarins were known for remaining together forever once paired up, and the more modestly colored one was the female, and the more dazzling feathers and ‘sails’ at its rear belonged to the male.
I moved in closer then, and slowly, sliding along one of the benches so as to not startle or disturb. And I reached for my phone, because this is what us more ordinary creatures in our more ordinary feathers now do: we don’t just watch, just admire; we try to capture, try to bottle the extraordinary when we find it, and maybe share it, maybe get others of our kind to look also, or even Like.
The ducks? Still they barely moved, except for the female who preened constantly at her feathers. The male stood stoically, more like the older woman on that further bench, and sometimes he, too, closed his eyes into the sun.
“Ojej!” — Oh dear! — my grandmother said later, when I showed her the photos, the video. She’d spent nearly all of her 91 years living by that park, though no longer did she often make it to the pond. These days on her walks, she turned back sooner.
Still, she said, never had she seen a duck like this one. Never. “What is it?” she wondered. And then instructed in Polish: “Please, please send it to your mother.”
So I emailed my mother in Los Angeles, and then my mother emailed her brother in San Francisco. They, too, had spent countless childhood hours in and around that park, yet they too could not remember such a duck.
Later, an email arrived from my mother, titled Duck is a hit. In it, she wrote:
The whole family is talking about this duck.
Then a message from my uncle:
Jas, this Asian duck — where exactly you photographed in Warsaw? I don’t recall anything like that from Poland.
And another from my mom, now talking about my grandmother:
Jas, Babcia is lately telling me how much more difficult it is for her to walk. When she walks to this place where she buys great eggs under the bridge it is not so comfortable anymore. But when I told her that she should maybe try to get to see the amazing DUCK she got so excited and said that “with Jas I would go!”
So maybe be so good and plan on this groundbreaking journey.
This Duck is so magical, I would be as excited myself to see it in the flesh.
Wanting to know more, wanting to understand — another thing we beings of ordinary feathers seem to need, to crave — I did go looking for answers. …
The Mandarin was introduced from the Far East, as its name suggests. Oddly for a duck, it nests in trees, sometimes high above the water. …
It can still be found in China, Japan, Korea and parts of Russia, while in the UK it is more often found in parts of South East England, North England, Wales and Scotland. …
A beautiful, unmistakable duck: male mandarins have elaborate plumage with orange plumes on their cheeks, orange ‘sails’ on their back, and pale orange sides; females are dull in comparison, with grey heads, brown backs and white eyestripe.” …
Mandarins do not have the migration instinct, I’d read, so ending up in faraway places such as these was the result of having once been brought over as pets or for ornamental reasons. The Mandarins there at the pond had had little bands around their legs, I’d noticed, so they’d been held by someone, somewhere, but where? By whom?
Google then informed that the Polish translation for the Mandarin duck was kaczka Mandarynka, and typing in kaczka Mandarynka w Warszawie led me to a lovely and informative blog by Hanna Żelichowska on the website for a nature society, called Stork. (In Polish, Towarzystwo Przyrodnicze “Bocian”)
There, Żelichowska writes that there are more than one hundred Mandarins living in Łazienki Park, which is a living, breathing fairy tale near central Warsaw, a sprawling wonderland replete with peacocks, swans, and curious red squirrels, 17th-century bathhouses and Chopin concerts on summer Sundays. I’d been to Łazienki many times, of course, yet couldn’t remember seeing such a duck. Perhaps I hadn’t been looking in the right places, or closely enough.
A translation of Żelichowska’s original Polish:
Łazienki is a special place, because it is here that wild, breeding Mandarins live year-round, the population of which is constantly growing. As rumor has it, a few Mandarins were brought to the park from Germany (?) in the 1990s. The ducklings quickly acclimatized here and in about 20 years they multiplied. I have been observing (and counting) Mandarins since 2008, when I first noticed them and was delighted with the beauty of these ducks. In the summer, females lead the young and in many places you can find Mandarins of various ages, from babies cuddled to mom’s feathers, to adolescents who are fully independent, but still sticking to the family flock…
In Chinese culture, a pair of mandarin ducks is a symbol of fidelity. These birds form pairs for life. The Chinese believe that when one of the ducks dies, the other dies of grief. I cannot confirm this. Often, however, you can see lonely males in other Warsaw parks, still remaining there, without a partner. I wonder if they could fly to Łazienki to find a new partner. Maybe this is the situation that after their hen, they don't wish for another ...?
Returning to the pond by the old water well, initially there was no sign of the Mandarins. That is, until it was the weekend again, and then again I found them there, this time out in the glassy water, the female leading the male along and the two of them making circles. Were these shy Mandarins native to Łazienki, but just escaping here each weekend from the flocks of tourists there? This I could only wonder — the two places were two kilometers apart — but I made a mental note to reach out to someone at Łazienki to see if I could find out more.
Slowly then the ducks drifted closer, but not too close. The male seemed sleepy, often closing his eyes for several seconds at a time, or keeping them half open. Then the two ducks moved away from the glassy part of the pond over to the section still caked with moss. Some mallards were there in the muck, and when one inched closer to the female Mandarin, her colorful mate awakened and chased that duck away.
Finally, seeming bored, the Mandarins drifted back over to the glassy part of the water, alone and keeping to themselves. From where they had come, a dog named Diana was now entering and wading through the water also, her owner calling out to her from the bank to please, please come back. Diana wasn’t listening. Diana, apparently, had always dreamed of being a duck.
Diana.
Several of the articles I’d found about the Mandarin had actually come from New York, because there in 2018, Mandarin mania swept through Manhattan. A male Mandarin had one day mysteriously appeared in Central Park, and was captured on camera by a local birdwatcher, whose photos went viral, as they say, on social media. Soon swells of people — hundreds, then thousands — began showing up to see the duck. More pictures and videos swirled, and the Mandarin in Central Park came to be known and referred to as the Hot Duck.
No one knew where the duck had come from — he, too, had a band around his leg, but no individual or zoo ever came forward claiming any knowledge. Some days the duck flew off from Central Park and visited Brooklyn. Or even New Jersey. But always, or at least for those five months, he returned mainly to that same pond in Central Park, mixing in with the mallards there, all the while the flocks of people kept showing up around him, just to catch a glimpse.
Soon, that New York duck had a Wikipedia page. His picture also made its way onto T-shirts available for sale. And one day a little dog even showed up to the pond with its owner, the dog dressed up in costume as the Hot Duck.
But then, then the duck was gone. It vanished and this time didn’t return, leaving people to only wonder about its mysterious arrival and now its fate. Even a children’s book about the duck came later; Bette Midler, the famous singer and actress, penned The Tale of the Mandarin Duck: A Modern Fable, the story about that one magical time a mysterious duck appeared in Central Park, causing all kinds of people to take a break from their lives, or even their phones, and look.
Everyone missed him, but he had worked his magic. He had reminded the people in the city — the artists and writers, the butchers, bakers, and perfumer makers, and everyone else — to look at the world with their own two eyes.
Among other quotes I found while reading about the Mandarin in New York, these were my favorite, taken from the same article in The Gothamist, titled The Cult of the Mandarin Duck.
Mandarins are a popular feng shui symbol, after all—according to one site, you should “choose the Mandarin ducks as a feng shui cure to attract love only if you genuinely, completely and absolutely feel the energy of love and devotion when you look at them.”
And from Gus Keri, the birder who captured and shared the first video of the Central Park Mandarin:
“People have their own reasons to be interested in this Duck. But above all, I believe, people are searching for a feel-good story to take away some of the stresses they are living under. What better way to forget all your misery than to look at a beautiful duck. I read recently a very beautiful quote by the screenwriter and film maker John Builello that says: 'Seeing the birds is like touching the hand of God. This is the Church of Many Feathers.' A beautiful bird like the Mandarin Duck is one of those birds that fulfill the need of people to touch the hand of God whoever that is to each person; God, Allah, Krishna, Buddha or Darwin."
When I phoned the information line at Łazienki Park, asking in my bad Polish if there was anyone there in charge of the wildlife, of monitoring the birds or perhaps even responsible for the bands around some of their legs, I was passed around a few times and finally told the person I needed to call was a woman named Beata. And in perhaps the most Polish turn of this story, when I then reached Beata by phone she seemed baffled by my call, asking me how I’d gotten her number and telling me she was not affiliated with Łazienki, nor did she know anything of any ducks.
Very well.
Moving on, I contacted Sylwia Dworak of Ortinolog Warszawa (Warsaw Ornithologist), a local wildlife protection organization. Dworak sent along some notes she gathered from some old birding atlases, which indicated that while the first Mandarin broods in Warsaw were spotted in Łazienki in 2001, the first recorded sighting of any Mandarin in the city actually took place on the Wisła River on November 24, 1985, near Młociny, then later in October of 1990 — both sightings being of “single females.”
As for the first broods, Dworak wrote, translated here into English: In Poland, the first broods were recorded in 2001-2002 in Warsaw in Łazienki Park (Tomiałojć and Stawarczyk 2003). It is highly probable that the breeding birds came from three breeding pairs released in this place in 1999 (Nowicki 2001). In 2001 a female leading her chicks was found. The following year, 3 females with chicks were observed (Mazgajski and Mazgajska 2004), and in February 2003 there were 25-30 males and females (Faunistic Commission 2004). …
Now it was time to travel to Łazienki myself. I wanted to see more Mandarins, if indeed they were there, and on my way I passed through the old park, the original pond. Again the Mandarins were absent, I hadn’t seen them for several visits, though I did spot a mallard mother leading along her young, and smiled at the fact that there always seemed to be that one slowpoke in any brood, forever catching up.
Pressing on, that question began to gnaw at me: how exactly to write about these ducks? And this experience?
Since discovering the Mandarin, and only scratching at the surface of their story in Warsaw, the biggest impression left upon me was not from a story about the Mandarin but of another duck native to Łazienki, the merganser. This was the story about how every year, the local mergansers lay their eggs in Łazienki but then migrate over to their more permanent home of the Wisła River. This journey can be treacherous, especially when the water level of the canal leading away from Łazienki is too high, forcing the birds to pass up and over two extremely busy roads, cars forever flying by. So this year, local preservationists worked together with government officials in preparing for this event. The birds were observed, and when they were spotted as being on the move, the discussed plan was put into action: police were called in and the heavy traffic halted, and then the Mergansers made their way across.
In reading about this, and in reading also about the little bird “gondolas” with mesh roofs set up by preservationists within the Piaseczyński Canal for both the mergansers and the Mandarins and other birds to climb upon and rest, a prevailing thought came to mind: this is how life should be, always in an all ways. Each of us looking after the other, helping the other along, no matter how different that other may be.
Mulling this, I came upon that canal leading away from Łazienki and saw those little gondolas there throughout the length of the water, those little bird islands. There was also an educational tablet informing passersby of the merganser, and even a sign attached to one of the trees, asking dog owners to please leash their dogs so as to not disturb the local birds. A woman then walked by with her unleashed dog, who sniffed at the freshly cut grass.
Out on the canal, as poplar seeds drifted on by like snowflakes, I noticed that several of the gondolas with their mesh roofs were not only being used as resting places for birds, but as full-stop nesting places. On one such gondola, a female coot rested there in between her twigs, while her male partner, a good man, swam towards her with yet one more in his beak, adding to the nest.
On other gondolas, other birds.
On another, a sunbathing turtle.
And on the south side of the canal, a Quarry Man, a Beatle: see the little road running alongside that end of the canal, up towards the Ujazdowski Castle, was named George Harrison Avenue. The idea for this had come from a Beatles fan in Warsaw who admired Harrison’s music as well as his passion for helping others. He petitioned the city, and in 2011 the path was thus christened and Ringo Starr came to give a concert. Now this path was leading me through the quiet shade of the trees alongside the canal until I came to another path, another canal branching off it towards the heart of Łazienki.
And here I spotted a Mandarin. Then another. And other ducks, and pigeons and coots and crows. And all of them were now approaching me even more than I was approaching them, and they followed me down along the path, too, as if I were Noah. The thing is, I hadn’t brought for them what they clearly wanted, which was food.
The Mandarins, I’d noticed, tended to always stay a little further back behind the other birds, never getting as close.
In some of the quieter areas within Łazienki — away from the usual visitors in the more popular areas, snapping their photos of the swans and the peacocks — there were lovers found on picnic blankets, a girl lying in some tall grass with a book overhead, and a shirtless man in a meadow, doing Tai Chi.
Naturally it was near the Tai Chi where I found a mother Mandarin and her chicks, down by a babbling brook. And though I stood at a distance from them it was the chicks who then waddled up the bank towards me while their mother followed more cautiously. Again I lamented at not having brought any food, as clearly these ducks and all of the wildlife at Łazienki was more used to charity.
When the mother and her little ones grew bored of me and wandered away, I waddled off myself to other parts of the park and spotted a Mandarin couple in one pond and a single male on the shaded bank of another.
The biggest concentration of Mandarins, it seemed, was back on that little canal off George Harrison Avenue. As I walked back towards that spot, and as poplar seeds continued to float on by and settle along the paths like fresh summer snow, a next idea came to mind: I would bring Babcia, my grandmother, here to see the Mandarins, since it was never a guarantee to see those two there at the pond of her local park.
Photo by Mateusz Szmelter of tvnwarszawa.pl
And so?
Yes we returned to that canal, to George Harrison Avenue.
And yes we spotted some Mandarins, only this time they proved even more shy than before, keeping to the shallows of the bank or completely to the other side of the water, even as we handed out some food.
The others — the other ducks and pigeons and of course the crows — they all gathered round more eagerly, happily, and Babcia giggled as she fed them, and she was glad to have seen a Mandarin, if even at a distance. Then we walked further in towards the heart of Łazienki, but before long my grandmother’s legs grew a little weary and so we sat for awhile on a bench in the shade. And we enjoyed the birdsong hailing down from the shimmering leaves all around us. And then we decided to go back. Back to give those ducks the last of our food, back to George Harrison’s path where my grandmother also wanted to get one more look at the thing which, on this day, fascinated her the most: an old tree. Actually a dead tree, long hollowed out but the stump still partially standing.
How old this must be!? And what was it? A storm? A bolt of lightning?
Babcia wondered these things aloud as she stood before it, and then we watched as a tiny blackbird landed on the dead stump, and climbed up slowly along the petrified wood, and then, like magic, it disappeared into one of the tree folds. Evidently there was another nest, another home, another world in there somewhere, too.
And soon we were back in a taxi returning home, and my grandmother was reaching across the back seat to pat me on the hand, and saying thank you, thank you for today. And maybe this should be the end of the story. This story about a duck who triggered our imaginations, our curiosities. Who forced us to look for answers, if even in some of the wrong places. Who took us on further journeys, longer walks. Who brought us there, to such wonderwalls, such music.
