Few do magnificence quite like the mandarin duck | Mark Cocker

Fernilee, Derbyshire: You could hardly blame them for flaunting their spectacular plumage, and that's what the males do in their glittering mating displayIt's funny to think that the 80 ducks present on this reservoir before me would have been unthinkable in my childhood. Even stranger is that we now get the birds on our garden pond. Yet all the known sites in the 1970s were in southern England and were often inflected towards landed privilege and material wealth. Windsor Great Park was one of their more prestigious addresses, but the other stronghold for the country's entire population was at Virginia Water in Surrey (where the average house price today is ?1.4m).Even the name of this hole-nesting waterfowl - mandarin duck - arose because the people bringing them back from China wanted to conjure both their exoticism as well as their elite status. In those days, the idea was further backed by hard cash. In 1864, the Zoological Society of London had to pay ?70 for just two pairs. At that price in today's values, my 80 Fernilee birds would be worth ?158,820. Continue reading...