Female Mandarin Ducks: How to Tell Male from Female

This page shows how to tell a male Mandarin Duck from a female in each plumage: the breeding drake, the female, the drake in eclipse and young birds. It also covers the female Wood Duck, which is easily confused with a female Mandarin, and how the sexes differ in their calls, their jobs at the nest and how long they survive. For everything else about the bird, see our Mandarin Duck guide.

In breeding plumage the drake is unmistakable: orange sails, orange face feathers and a red bill. The ones that need a closer look are the female, the drake in eclipse and young birds, which all share her grey-brown look, white spectacle and pale-spotted flanks.^{1, 2, 3}

A female Mandarin is grey-brown. Her head is pale grey and slightly shaggy, and a narrow white ring round the eye usually runs back as a thin white line, like a pair of spectacles. Her throat is whitish, her back brown, and her breast and flanks are dappled with pale spots. The bill is greyish, with a pale tip, and she has striking white lines on the inner wing feathers.^{1, 2, 3}

His two orange "sails" are inner wing feathers, blue with broad orange-buff outer webs, held up over the back. Streaked orange feathers cover the sides of his face, below a broad white band from the bill to a long crest that runs from glossy green and purple to coppery red and white. He has a maroon-purple breast, a white belly, pale orange flanks with black and white bars, orange-buff legs and feet, and dark brown eyes with a yellowish outer ring. The bill is red, with a pale tip.^{1, 4, 2, 3}

The drake also has an eclipse plumage, worn between moults, in which he looks much like the female.¹ Birds of the World's account, the BTO and RSPB species pages and eBird do not say when it is worn or how to tell an eclipse drake from a female.

The drake below is in moult: mostly grey-brown like a female, with a few orange face feathers left, a maroon patch on the side of the breast and a pinkish-red bill. On this bird, the leftover orange face feathers and the maroon on the breast give him away. The bill is a weaker clue: a female's bill is greyish with a pale tip, but some show red at the base, like the female above.

Drakes are a little heavier than females. Drakes weigh 571-693 g and females 428-608 g.¹ In the BTO's measurements of live adults, drakes averaged 634.5 g (85 birds) and females 600.8 g (103), and the drake's wing averaged 239.4 mm (105) against the female's 231.1 mm (125).⁵

Young birds look like the female, but are more evenly grey-brown, with fainter face markings and less dappling on the breast and flanks. Ducklings have olive-brown down above and yellowish down below, on the wings and on the rump, and a grey-purple bill.¹ The same sources give no way to tell young drakes from young females.

Like the Mandarin, the Wood Duck is listed in Part I of Schedule 9 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (England and Wales), among non-native animals established in the wild.⁶ Drakes are easy to tell apart: a drake Wood Duck has a glossy green and purple crested head with white straps on the chin and neck, a red eye, a burgundy breast and no orange sails.⁴

Females are much harder. A female Wood Duck has a bolder white patch round the eye and a darker head.⁴ A female Mandarin has a narrower white ring round the eye that usually runs back as a line, a paler grey head with finely streaked cheeks, and paler legs; her underparts carry more spots, the white lines on her inner wing stand out, her white throat is less clear-cut, and her bill differs in pattern and shape, though these features may vary.¹

Both sexes are fairly quiet, calling mostly when disturbed or courting. The drake's calls are mostly variations on a sharp whistle that rises, with a deeper, nasal, snorting part, written "hwick" or "uib uib". The female's main call is a single loud, sharp "kett" or "ke"; if you cannot see the bird, it could pass for a Coot. In display she repeats a plaintive "ack", up to 53 times a minute, sometimes in flight.¹

Pairs usually form where the birds spend the winter, from September but mainly in February and March, and both birds of the pair choose the nest hole.¹ The female incubates the eggs alone for 28-30 days.⁵ The pair bond usually lasts only until late in incubation, more rarely into the duckling stage, and the female raises the ducklings alone.¹

In both studies we read, females survived less well than drakes. In an introduced population in Germany, 66% of adult drakes and 57% of adult females survived each year, and females died most in the breeding season.^{1, 7} In central Taiwan, 34 radio-tagged males and 42 females followed in 1999-2002 survived at 80% and 44% a year. Adult males there outnumbered females about two to one (2.1:1), possibly because of the females' lower survival; young birds were not male-biased.⁸

1. Carboneras, C., Kirwan, G. M. (2020). Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata), version 1.0. Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie and E. de Juana, editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.manduc.01
2. RSPB. Mandarin Duck. RSPB Birds and wildlife. Accessed 3 November 2026. Source
3. eBird. Mandarin Duck. eBird species page (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). Accessed 3 November 2026. Source
4. Hepp, G. R., Bellrose, F. C. (2020). Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), version 1.0. Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.wooduc.01
5. British Trust for Ornithology. Mandarin Duck. BirdFacts. Accessed 3 November 2026. Source
6. UK Parliament (1981). Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 14 and Schedule 9. legislation.gov.uk. Accessed 3 November 2026. Source
7. Bellebaum, J., Mädlow, W. (2015). Survival explains sex ratio in an introduced Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata population. Ardea 103: 183-187. doi:10.5253/arde.v103i2.a7
8. Sun, Y.-H., Bridgman, C. L., Wu, H.-L., Lee, C.-F., Liu, M., Chiang, P.-J., Chen, C.-C. (2011). Sex ratio and survival of Mandarin Ducks in the Tachia River of central Taiwan. Waterbirds 34: 509-513. doi:10.1675/063.034.0415