[Washington Examiner] A part-male, part-female cardinal was spotted in Pennsylvania on Saturday, according to a local resident who said he's been a bird-watcher for 48 years.The rare find had feathers that were red on one side and tan on the other.
Jamie Hill said he's a longtime birder and was alerted to the cardinal by a friend. The owner of the property where the bird had been seen gave him permission to take a few photos. Hill called it a "one in a million bird encounter" in a Facebook post.
A similar cardinal was spotted in 2019, also in Pennsylvania. It is possible that the two sightings have actually been of the same bird.
At the time of the 2019 encounter, the bird was what is known as a "bilateral gynandromorph," meaning it is one-half male and one-half female.
"Most gynandromorph individuals are infertile, but this one may actually be fertile, as the left side is female, and only the left ovary in birds is functional," Daniel Hooper, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told National Geographic.
Pictures of the more recent sighting showed that the female half of the bird is also on the right side.