“One in a million” bird sighting happened in Florida when an extremely rare yellow cardinal showed up in the backyard of a local woman from Port St. Lucie, Florida.
The yellow cardinal appeared in Tracy Workman’s backyard.
Tracy Workman first spotted the bird in her backyard one Saturday morning and was ecstatic to see something so rare. The cardinal’s feathers, however, were not the normal cardinal-color, but instead a rare bright yellow. Unfortunately, the bird flew away before she was able to get pictures of the bird the first time it arrived, but being a photography teacher for a homeschooling group, she was ready the next time.
Tracy decided to call the bird, “Sunny”, as she notes, “I thought it was a good name for a yellow cardinal in Florida.”
Nine days later, the bird returned and Tracy was ready with her camera in hand. She followed the bird around for five minutes taking pictures for others to get a glimpse of the rare bird.
“Following a bird is of course not the best way to get pictures of it,” Tracy reported. “But at first, I didn’t believe I actually saw it. I was super excited.”
The bright yellow color is due to a genetic mutation.
Others are excited about the finding and have given some explanation of the rare color. A professor and Curator of Birds from Auburn University, Geoffrey Hill, notes that the bird has a rare mutation in its genes. The mutation has forced a change in the bird’s DNA or a “knockout of the redness pathway” which alters the red pigment normally found in the Northern Cardinal species. This process of cell mutation is similar to that of albinism in humans.
In the Cardinal, the gene mutation has replaced the striking red coloring with golden yellow. In 2003, Geoffrey Hill began studying the bird’s genes after a donation of a yellow Northern Cardinal feather to the Louisiana Museum. Through extensive research, Hill and his team determined that the yellow coloring was due to a genetic mutation. While there are some species, like finches, that will turn yellow in captivity, the northern cardinals will turn pale red. All the more evidence of a truly yellow northern cardinal is a rare sighting indeed.
The bird is “one in a million”.
Yellow cardinal sightings are extremely rare and Professor Hill added that the site is “one in a million”. Only about one in three sightings are reported every year so everyone becomes very excited when one is spotted. The Collection Manager at the Division of Ornithology at the Florida Museum in Gainesville, Thomas Webber, also notes that the rare yellow northern cardinal makes up “well below one percent” of the cardinal population.
“It’s an extremely rare phenomenon,” noted Webber.
Since so few of the rare birds are seen, we are lucky that Tracy Workman had her camera out and ready to share the photos with the world. Thanks to her quick photo-taking, we too are able to share in the joy of witnessing such a rare event.
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