Did you hear that? Bird watchers all across the world just collectively gasped.
A recent bird sighting has the bird watching world astounded, and rightfully so. It’s not everyday that you see a genetically mutated cardinal, and one Michigan family was lucky enough to have one visit their back yard. John and Arlene McDaniel – avid bird watchers – were going about their regular lives when a yellow cardinal landed near their bird feeder.
Arlene wasn’t sure if her eyes were deceiving her, and she told Michigan Live that she called her husband over to the window to double check that she was, in fact, seeing a yellow cardinal:
“I couldn’t believe it, you know? And I asked my husband, I said, ‘Come and look at this. Have you seen this?’ And yes, he verified he was seeing it too. We just sit here in the morning, and we watch.
He seems to make a regular appearance between like 10 a.m. and noon, and then sometimes he’ll come later in the day. He’s real shy about going on the feeder. He likes to be on the ground or up in the tree.”
The McDaniels have been very careful about not spooking the bird, and have done their best to document and take pictures of the rare creature that has been frequenting their back yard. It has all of the features of a beautiful cardinal (I’m partial since it’s my home state of Kentucky’s state bird), only it has traded out the signature red for a bright yellow hue.
Nature is truly amazing.
The only negative impact that can come from shining a light on a special, rare bird like this one? It can draw crowds, which can then quickly turn into disturbing the cardinal. Many bird experts would actually encourage this special, one-in-a-million yellow cardinal to be left alone – as hard as that might be for some bird watchers.
Ornithologist Geoffrey Hill, who is a professor at Auburn University in Alabama, would advise those in Michigan to let the bird be. He also suggested that calling the bird one-in-a-million would be an understatement. The rarity of a yellow cardinal is even greater, according to him:
“Actually, there are about 50 million cardinals in North America, according to estimates from surveys, and there’s probably, at any one time, about five yellow cardinals known somewhere. So, it probably is more like one in 10 million birds.”
As to how the yellow cardinal has come to exist, it’s believed to be the result of a “knockout mutation,” which can basically be described in more layman’s terms as a DNA sequence with an element missing. But don’t take it from me. Take it from a literal expert on birds, Professor Hill, who explained the phenomenon as the following:
“It’s actually two enzymes. It requires a two-step process for a cardinal to be red. All it takes is a mistake in the DNA that codes for that protein, and then it’s a fatal mistake, and then the protein doesn’t work, and then they can’t use it. They’re yellow.”
See? Science isn’t always boring…
