In 2018, crowds flocked en masse to see the Mandarin duck, a rare multicolored fowl that had taken up residence in the Central Park pond. Before long, the duck — dubbed "hot duck" — was the subject of blog posts and newspaper articles, while his likeness appeared on t-shirts and in watercolor portraits. Then, just as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone. It wasn’t particularly concerning at first. The duck had often been spotted vacationing in New Jersey or taking sabbaticals in the Hudson River, so people figured he would return around September, after molting season. September turned into November, and November slid into December, and still……no duck. David Barrett of Manhattan Bird Alert said he began to consider the possibility that the duck suffered some sort of tragic fate. What troubled him was that he so quickly went from being seen by everyone to being seen by no one. Barrett’s guess was that the duck had flown far north to a smaller pond so he could get away from people. Meanwhile, Central Park now has a new “hot duck” — a green-winged teal. The bird has been spotted at the southeast side of the Central Park Reservoir and multiple times at The Pool near the West 100th Street entrance to the park. Manhattan Bird Alert's tweets about the duck have gotten thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets in recent days. The social media posts all come with dozens of complimentary adjective comments such as "beautiful," "glorious," and "fashionable.”
