Mandarin duck draws crowds to Central Park after mysteriously arriving in New York

A brightly coloured Mandarin duck that appeared suddenly in Central Park has attracted swarms of New York City locals, tourists and bird watchers to one of the park's ponds.

A horde of photographers has been gathering daily in the park off Fifth Avenue for well over a month, hoping to catch a glimpse of the exotic bird with pink, purple, orange and emerald green plumage and markings.

Joe Amato, who travels almost daily from his Queens home to the pond with his expensive camera equipment in tow, compared the bird to “a living box of crayons”.

“So many people are drawn to this bird because its vibrant, vivid colours are associated with sunsets and rainbows,” he said.

Bird lovers and sightseers have documented the bird’s every move through social media postings and videos that have noted its gentle glides across the water, its sniping at the ordinary mallards and its travels to a lake in nearby New Jersey.

Leesa Beckmann commuted two and a half hours from her home in Vernon Township, New Jersey, to see the duck that her 90-year-old mother has been talking about since its arrival.

“I’ve got to see this magnificent duck,” Ms Beckmann said to her mother.

She plans to shoot and frame photos for her mother to hang on the wall.

However, ornithologist Paul Sweet, who heads a vast collection of bird specimens at the New York-based American Museum of Natural History, says there's nothing special about the duck.

He said that there is another Mandarin duck a short walk away at the Central Park Zoo and such ducks are often imported from Asia for use on private property.

“This bird is clearly not a vagrant,” said Mr Sweet, adding that there are no records of actual wild Mandarin ducks in North America.

“A lot of non-birders tend to see gaudy birds as more beautiful,” Mr Sweet said. “But to me it’s no more beautiful than, say, a sparrow.”

AP