Crested Shelduck - Relationship With Humans

Relationship With Humans

This duck was collected in Korea and exported to Japan between 1716 and 1736 for aviculture, where it was known as the Korean Mandarin Duck. It was captured for aviculture in Japan up to at least 1854 and was portrayed in the Kanbun-Kinpu, a Japanese avicultural work. Old Chinese tapestries also portray a duck similar in appearance to the Crested Shelduck. Kuroda claimed that Japanese hunters were still hunting the species in Korea in the 1920s. Three specimens exist in museums. The only male specimen is kept with a female in the Kuroda collection in the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, Tokyo. The male was collected at the mouth of the Geum River in 1913 or 1914, and the female was collected near Busan in December 1916. The female specimen described by Philip Lutley Sclater, collected by Lieutenant F. Irmininger near Vladivostok in April 1877, was displayed in 1894 by the Zoological Society of London and today is kept in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. Two additional Crested Shelduck specimens are known to have existed, though both have been lost. The female collected in 1913 along with the sole male was given to a friend of the collector and subsequently has vanished. Additionally, around 1900 a Chinese hunter offered a specimen to a Peking University professor, but, as the professor did not realize how rare the bird was, was turned down. In 1991, the Crested Shelduck appeared on a Mongolian postage stamp.