Photos show rare bird with both male and female plumage

Hamish Spencer was supposed to be on vacation, but a birding trip in Colombia led to an encounter with an extremely rare bird—a green honeycreeper (Chlorophanes spiza) with green female plumage on one side and blue male plumage on the other.

“Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird,” said Spencer, a zoologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, who published the sighting in the Journal of Field Ornithology. “The phenomenon is extremely rare in birds.”

It’s only the second recorded example of gynandromorphism in the green honeycreeper in more than 100 years.

Spencer credits fellow birder John Murillo for spotting the bird and capturing photos of it. Those images are “arguably the best of a wild bilateral gynandromorphic bird of any species ever,” he said.

Read more from the University of Otago.