April Britt of Massachusetts found a baby female cardinal with unusual deformities in her backyard
A woman in Northampton made an unusual discovery in her backyard that is sure to have bird lovers around the country very curious.
April Britt said adult cardinals had been flying around her property for a few days, so she went outside to investigate on Monday.
“There was this little deformed bird sitting on the lower branch,” said Britt.
She spotted a baby cardinal with two heads and three beaks.
“This bird had like a double head that wasn’t quite separated, but you could see there was gonna be two heads and three beaks,” said Britt.
Britt said she’s seen some pretty unusual things in the wild, but nothing like a two-headed bird.
“I thought it was pretty rare. I’ve definitely never seen anything like it. I’ve seen a two-headed snake and I’ve seen a frog in a pond with three legs, but I’ve never seen a deformed bird like this before,” said Britt.
Britt said an adult cardinal continues to feed the baby chick.
However, as the bird gets older, is it not expected to survive. The Massachusetts Audubon Society says animals with abnormalities like that usually don’t live very long in the wild.
Source
(Photo Courtesy: April Britt via the Daily Hampshire Gazette)
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can you imagine its singing? that is one hell of a song
so sad it wont survive but then one never knows..
I wonder about the radiation from Fukushima. If you look at the real-time radiation reports online, there are often air currents that are carrying radiation to the eastern US. I know nature does this kind of abnormality normally, so if I lived there, I would look for a larger than usual # of dying trees and plants with bizarre shapes (especially newly grown ones) in the same area as the bird's nest. Then again, where did this cardinal over-winter? Maybe the parents have been affected by radiation elsewhere. I'm not calling all oddities of nature radiation poisoning, but I know that radiation poisoning IS causing some and in areas that would seem unlikely to those who aren't paying attention to where the radiation is moving.