Ammon News - With vibrant colours and bright orange sail feathers, mandarin ducks have recently been popping up across the West Midlands, delighting residents and leaving many wondering how such a striking species ended up on their doorstep.

The exotic-looking birds have been attracting birdwatchers and photographers to a number of beauty spots across the region, including Birmingham's Sutton Park.

One local photographer, Jamil El Farsi, said finding the birds so close to home was "unbelievable".

"They don't look real, they look like a painting," he said. "That's how vibrant they are, the colours."

Native to East Asia, mandarin ducks were introduced to England from China in the early 20th Century and have since become naturalised, with populations appearing mainly in south-east England, as well as parts of Wales and Scotland.

The ducks were considered non-invasive and posed no threat to native species, remaining a "rare and special sight", said the Canal and River Trust.

The males are best known for their colourful sail feathers, while the females have grey-brown feathers and a white eye stripe.

With their distinctive appearance, some social media users have even mistaken the birds for images generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

El Farsi, who captured a series of striking images, described how he spent hours waiting to take the perfect shot of the birds, which tend to favour quieter areas and can sometimes be challenging to photograph.

The birds, which are known for nesting in holes in old trees, are often found hiding beneath overhanging willows.

"They are very shy birds and they tend to hide," El Farsi, from Birmingham, explained.

He said of photographing one bird: "I was waiting honestly for about two hours for it because it was swimming around one of the logs, just to perch on one of the logs, so you could get a portrait, like a picture of it out of the water."

The birds have continued to attract attention from visitors and wildlife enthusiasts, with crowds visiting Sutton Park with their phones and cameras in the hopes of spotting them.

El Farsi, who first saw the birds in The Leasowes in Halesowen, returned to Sutton Park in October with his wife and children to see them again.

"People were coming from everywhere, Wolverhampton [and] all around the Midlands," he said.

"As soon as we got there, my younger kids were running around. And as soon as they saw them, they were jumping around: 'Oh, they're still here, they're still here, dad'."

Wildlife experts said mandarin ducks were now an increasingly common sight in Britain, with numbers continuing to rise in recent years.

There were now "far more of them" in the West Midlands, explained Nathan Cope, founder of BirdFact.

"Around Birmingham, they now turn up about five times as often in birdwatchers' records as they did 10 years ago, even though the number of people recording birds has stayed about the same," he said.

Cope told the BBC the British population of mandarin ducks was thought to have grown from birds that had escaped from collections about a century ago.

"Numbers across the UK have grown more than sixfold since the mid-1990s and spread through central England, so the West Midlands is catching up with the south," he added.

The Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust said the species had thrived in England, with breeding numbers increasing by 663% between 1995 and 2024.

There are now thought to be between 4,400 and 7,000 breeding pairs in the UK.

James Benwell, from the trust, said he believed mandarin ducks were the "world's most beautiful duck".

"The males are truly exotic looking, with bright colours and their distinctive sail feathers. The females are far less showy," he said.

The trust said there had been a resident population at Sutton Park for a number of years, as well as a long-term resident at Perry Hall Park and sightings at Sandwell Valley, Red House Park Pool and Fens Pools.

Benwell said autumn was the best time to spot mandarin ducks because the males regained the "distinctive" and "dramatic" plumage they had lost during the summer moulting season.

"It's a really good time to go out and spot them now, and the population at Sutton Park has taken up residence on the popular Keeper's Pool, meaning that they are delighting many visitors to the park," Benwell said.

"There are around 15 males present, as well as more females, so they really are a wonderful sight to behold and it's well worth making a trip to see them."

BBC