Extremely Rare Half-Male, Half-Female Cardinal Spotted in Pennsylvania


It was a once in a lifetime sight for this couple in Pennsylvania, when they’ve spotted an extremely rare bird that visited their backyard feeder. It proved to be a half male, half female cardinal. While, the males are bright red, the females’ plumage is pale brown. However, the one that Jeffrey and Shirley Caldwell spotted was half red, half dull brownish.

“Never did we ever think we would see something like this in all the years we’ve been feeding,” Shirley Caldwell told the National Geographic.


According to the National Geographic this rare condition is called bilateral gynandromorph and it means that half of the birds’ body is male and the other half female. “This remarkable bird is a genuine male/female chimera,”Daniel Hooper, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology told National Geographic.

However, the most interesting and fascinating part about this bird is that it is actually able to reproduce. “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 in functional,” Mr. Hooper said.

After all, the Caldwells admitted the rare cardinal is never alone as almost al the time a male is around it. “We’re happy it’s not lonely,” Shirley said.

This isn’t the first time when a cardinal is leaving the world baffled with its uniqueness. Last year, ‘one in a million’ yellow cardinal was spotted in Alabama.


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