My friend Jim Meinhold (of Varied Thrush fame) sent me this great blog article and I thought I’d crib something from it just in case no-one had seen these amazing images yet.
They are of a gynandromorph bird (yes I had to look it up in wikipedia as well). Basically it’s an animal which displays both male and female characteristics and in rare occasions, as with this Cardinal, the animal can display bilateral gynandromorphism where one side shows male characteristics and the other female.
A quick search on the web for this rare phenomenon produced these pictures of a gynandromorph Evening Grosbeak skin. The Powdermill Website also has some cool pictures of Rose Breasted Grosbeak (more on their website here) and an Eastern Towhee showing similar characteristics (more here). I also found a couple of examples of cage birds.
Pretty interesting stuff and cool pictures. I just had to share!
Under Clear Skies 