Forgotten your penguin suit? Rare Albino bird makes debut at zoo in Poland but faces being left out in the cold as other animals could reject it for being the odd one out

Penguin also prone to diseases because it lacks a black pigmentation 

Hatched in mid-December at Gdansk Zoo but sex has not yet been identified 

Director Michal Targowski said bird would have been first to be attacked in wild

By HARRY HOWARD FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 19:30, 22 March 2019 | UPDATED: 02:20, 23 March 2019

An extremely rare albino penguin has made its debut at a Polish zoo but faces being rejected by other birds because it is the odd one out. 

The albino penguin hatched in mid-December at Gdansk zoo, and has been under veterinary care since then. 

In footage of its release, the timid little bird is shown being prodded into its new enclosure with its companions. 

In the wild, such an unusual-looking penguin would be rejected by other penguins and would have little chance of survival. 

At its new home, it has its parents and two other birds for company. 

The bird's sex has not yet been determined. It weighs 1.1 pounds and stands 11 inches tall.

Continued

WATCH: Meet Eclipse - the 1 in 100,000 black barn owl

PUBLISHED: 10:43 01 March 2019 | UPDATED: 11:07 01 March 2019

Ross Bentley

Black is the new white - at least it was when an extremely rare barn owl visited north Essex recently.

 Eclipse is a black barn owl and part of a wildlife display show put on by Coda Falconry - a bird of prey centre in Waltham Abbey that brought some of its birds up to Hedingham Castle to show them over the half-term break.

According to business owner Sarah Jane Manarin, black barn owls occur once every 100,000 births in the barn owl population and the highly unusual birds don’t last long in their native habitat.

“You don’t see black barn owls in the wild because their mother rejects them and doesn’t feed them,” she said.

Read on and watch video

Bird watchers in a twitter over this extremely rare cardinal

By Tamar Lapin

February 28, 2018 | 2:11pm | Updated

Bird watchers are flocking to a small Alabama city this week to catch a glimpse of a cardinal with a one-in-a-million genetic mutation that causes its bright red feathers to be a striking shade of yellow.

Alabaster resident Charlie Stephenson first noticed the unusual feathered creature in her backyard bird feeder in late January and posted about it on Facebook.

“I thought ‘well there’s a bird I’ve never seen before,’” said Stephenson, who’s been birdwatching for decades, AL.com reported. “Then I realized it was a cardinal… and it was a yellow cardinal.”

The special bird is still around, stopping by the bird feeder at least once a day, Stephenson said.

Continued  

Carmel man snaps photo of rare black flamingo

By MATT DAVENPORT 

Herald Correspondent

POSTED: 03/12/2014 05:20:29 PM 

When he couldn't find any snakes on a desert plain, a Carmel man turned his camera lens to a salt pond and captured an even rarer sight — a black-feathered flamingo.

Don Presser, 70, photographed what he said could be the "one and only black flamingo in the world" on a trip to Eilat, Israel, in February. Presser sent the image to Monterey County bird experts who identified it as a rare melanistic Greater Flamingo.

Other photographs of a darkly-hued flamingo in Eilat first appeared on birding websites last spring, and some sites also claimed the bird is one of a kind. It's unclear if what Presser saw is the same bird.

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