A beautiful mandarin duck that captured the hearts of photographers and onlookers at Philadelphia’s Pennypack Park has died.
The Pennypack Environmental Center made the announcement on Facebook on Tuesday.
An employee at the Pennypack Environmental Center told NBC10 a visitor at the park discovered the duck unresponsive. That visitor then reached out to the center who confirmed the duck’s death.
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Officials have not revealed a cause of death but the employee told NBC10 it was not due to the recent frigid temperatures.
The duck was first spotted by onlookers at Pennypack Park in November. Mandarin ducks are native to East Asia though people in the U.S. sometimes keep them as pets.
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“So someone either released it to Pennypack Park or it escaped and then settled in Pennypack Park,” Damien Ruffner of the Discovery Center told NBC10 in December.
Photographers often gathered at Pennypack Park to snap photos of the beautiful creature. Several people posted pictures of the duck in the comments underneath the Environmental Center’s announcement.
