Ted and I met my friend Richard and his daughter Nadia for an early morning walk around Yeadon Tarn this morning to give our wives a decent and well deserved lie in. It was a very grey day, and it was freezing cold, but we managed a few laps of the lake. As we were walking, we spotted this beautiful duck in amongst the more common mallards, moorhens, geese, and seagulls.
We didn’t know what it was, but it was very colourful and elegant. We’ve since learnt that it is a mandarin duck, and that they are quite rare in the UK, having all descended from birds imported from Asia and subsequently released or escaped. There is more on the BBC Nature’s page about the Mandarin Duck.
We were walking our three Cavalier King Charles Spaniels round the lake on Sunday when my husband spotted this beautiful duck. The colours are so wonderful, neither of us has ever seen one of these before [ it quite brightened the day.
My husband and I spotted this beautiful bird this morning (Sun 5.2.12.)and didn’t know the breed until we visited this site, We did take a photo of it on my phone but it wasn’t very clear as I couldn’t focus properly, due to touch phone and bright light. It is a beautiful bird.