Well--kinda--the coloration is there but it isn't actually 2 different species or races.
As viewed, this is a rare Cardinal--right side displays the usual male red colors--left side has the normal female colors--split right down the middle.
| | | quote | Peer and retired high school biology teacher Bob Motz observed a northern cardinal with the red coloring of a male on the left side and dull brownish-gray feathers of a female on the right for two winters in the backyard of Motz's Rock Island home.
"It was the most striking and bizarre bird I have ever seen," said Peer, who lives in Bettendorf, Iowa, and teaches at Western Illinois University in Macomb. "From one side it looked like a normal female, from the other, a normal male. But from the front you could see the line, right down the middle."
Although the observations took place a few years ago, their recently published study on the bird has caused a stir, bringing inquiries that Peer never expected.
"It is extremely rare," Peer said of the bird.
Creatures such as the two-colored cardinal Peer and Motz saw are known as the bilateral gynandromorphs. Peer said there have been fewer than 50 documented sightings of bilateral gynandromorphs in nature. Most have been birds, he said, but there also have been butterflies and chickens.
"If you look in the literature, a number of the studies on gynandromorphs are based on museum specimens," Peer said. "To see them in the wild, and for a prolonged time, is a very rare event." |
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http://www.chicagotribune.c...-20150211-story.html[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-12-2015).]
