On a small farm nestled among forestland a few miles outside of Manizales, Colombia, the proprietors had set up a feeding station for bird watching. In October 2021, they noticed a unique, new visitor. The bird was a green honeycreeper, but unlike any they’d seen. The right half of the bird had the aqua blue plumage of a male, while the left half had the bright green plumage of a female. It was bilaterally gynandromorphic, a rare condition in which an organism exhibits both male and female characteristics. On December 12, 2023, the University of Otago in New Zealand said that one of their professors, Hamish Spencer, and amateur ornithologist John Murillo, documented the bird in photographs and a video.
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/R4vk6abxFns?feature=shared
Spencer, an evolutionary geneticist, said: Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird. The phenomenon is extremely rare in birds … It is very striking, I was very privileged to see it.He went on to say that the photographs of the bird are: … arguably the best of a wild bilateral gynandromorphic bird of any species ever.
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