{"id":17153,"date":"2025-10-23T12:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T12:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/17153\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T12:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T12:22:07","slug":"one-in-a-million-yellow-cardinal-seen-in-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/17153\/","title":{"rendered":"One-in-a-Million Yellow Cardinal Seen in South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"a
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCoral Springs resident Dyane Oliva spotted a rare yellow cardinal in her backyard this week.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Photo by Dyane Oliva<\/p>\n

Even if you haven\u2019t slipped down the birding rabbit hole that befalls many 30-somethings \u2014 yes, it\u2019s coming for you too, Zoomers \u2014 you probably know what a cardinal looks like. It\u2019s red, it\u2019s got a thick beak, and there\u2019s some black plumage in there, too. If you\u2019ve seen a cardinal-looking bird that\u2019s not bright red, you\u2019ve likely spotted a female or juvenile, both of which are drab compared to their adult male counterparts.<\/p>\n

But when Coral Springs resident Dyane Oliva spotted a cardinal-shaped \u201clittle yellow blob\u201d in the grass while weeding in her backyard on Sunday, October 19, she knew something was off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, weird, must be an oriole,\u201d she tells New Times, adding she\u2019s used to interesting sightings<\/a> during migration season at her home near Wiles Road and the Sawgrass Expressway. But she\u2019d never seen anything like this.<\/p>\n

She took her phone out for a closer look. \u201cIt\u2019s got the little facemask that cardinals usually have. I\u2019m like, \u2018There\u2019s no way this is a cardinal \u2014 it\u2019s yellow! It\u2019s as bright as a lemon!\u201d<\/p>\n

But it sure looked like a cardinal. Remembering a viral story about an orange seagull that was thought to be a rarity<\/a> but was later found to be simply covered in curry or turmeric, Oliva began to research online. An employee of Broward County\u2019s Natural Resources Division, she knew enough about Florida wildlife to report the sighting to the Florida Ornithological Society and citizen science apps iNaturalist and eBird.<\/p>\n

She also posted about the sighting on Reddit, where one user suggested she play the lottery this week. Until she saw the animated online response, she had no idea just how lucky she was to have a rare yellow cardinal show up in her backyard. \u201cWe do get kind of weird birds down here,\u201d she says, \u201cso I was just like, \u2018Oh, a mutant!’\u201d<\/p>\n

A Rare Genetic Mutation<\/p>\n

As it turns out, that\u2019s pretty spot on. The yellow cardinal Oliva spotted likely has a genetic mutation called xanthochromism. Some birds \u2014 flamingos being one well-known example<\/a> \u2014 get their color from their diet, explains Tropical Audubon Society president Jos\u00e9 Francisco Barros. \u201cCardinals also convert the food that they eat into pigments,\u201d he says. \u201cThis seems to be a genetic mutation that doesn\u2019t allow the red to become dominant, so the yellow becomes more dominant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the anomaly, Barros says the Coral Springs yellow cardinal is likely otherwise unremarkable. \u201cMight the yellow kind of throw him off as far as his surroundings? Maybe so, but as far as we know, they\u2019re just as healthy as other birds,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s estimated that about one in a million Northern Cardinals are yellow. \u201cAlthough not unheard of, it is a rare sighting,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are only about three seen every year in the country, or in their range, which is mostly Eastern North America. Everyone knows the red cardinal, so the yellow one definitely is impressive and a sight that catches the eye of many people as something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Past Sightings in Florida<\/p>\n

Barros says he can\u2019t think of any other yellow cardinal sightings this far south, nor by Tropical Audubon members. \u201cDoesn\u2019t mean it didn\u2019t happen, but I don\u2019t know of one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there have been several sightings across the state in recent years. In 2023, Daytona News-Journal columnist Mark Lane wrote about spotting a yellow cardinal at his feeder<\/a>. The previous year, Gainesville Sun photographer Brad McClenny captured images of another \u2014 nicknamed \u201cTweets\u201d \u2014 in a wooded area at the University of Florida<\/a>. (Barros has a friend who chased and photographed it.) Another yellow cardinal was spotted in Port St. Lucie in 2019<\/a>, and in January 2020 \u2014 two months before pandemic lockdowns led to a global birding boom<\/a> \u2014 two South Florida sightings were reported within minutes of each other<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given the national interest other sightings have garnered, does Oliva worry about birders flocking (sorry) to her backyard?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, Wiles Road, it\u2019s this big stretch, and there\u2019s a bunch of houses along it, so hopefully no one can narrow it down to be near my house,\u201d she says. \u201cI mean, people can go out there. It\u2019s public property.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barros says she should prepare for some visitors, but not as many as other oddities might yield. \u201cWould it attract as much [attention] as a South American vagrant or a Caribbean bird that makes its way up here? Maybe not as much, but it\u2019s still a rarity, and I know there would be some people who would love to see this bird.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coral Springs resident Dyane Oliva spotted a rare yellow cardinal in her backyard this week. Photo by Dyane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5884,1563,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-17153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-animals-wildlife","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}