Nobody knows why this snowy owl is orange

Julie Maggert spent four long days trying to take the perfect photo of a snowy owl in Michigan whose unusual orange color left scientists bracket.

The photographer of amateur wildlife was sitting in traffic, guiding between the scouting locations, when he finally identified the bird, which nicknamed Creamsicle, perched on a users.

“When I saw her for the first time up there, I was like, in no way,” Mount Pleason, Mich, said Mich. How it happens It hosts Nil Kӧksal.

“My adrenaline was pumping and I was trembling because I was so excited. And I’m like, I have to have all my perfect camera settings. And I took it.”

Maggert says that the blows are its most proud photographic result. He took photos of snowy owls for six years and has never seen one like this.

Bird experts agree on Creamsicle is rare – and potentially even unique – in its coloring. But I don’t agree on what’s behind the orange feathers.

Maybe he was born with it

Karen Cleveland, biologist of the wildlife of the Department of Natural Resources of Michigan, claims to have started to receive reports of Orange Snowy Owl about two months ago and have monitored him since then.

“Among the most likely explanations there are genetic mutation, accidental coloring and deliberated coloring,” said Cleveland, a biologist of wildlife with the Department of Natural Resources of Michigan, who is monitoring the bird.

“The deliberated coloring is generally explained by the marking made for scientific research purposes or marking made by unbelievers for reasons known only to themselves.”

The theory of genetic mutation was offered for the first time by Kevin Mcgraw, a biologist from Michigan State University who wrote a book on the coloring of birds.

Michigan Live said to the local media outlet That rusty plumage of Creamsicle could be an expression of normally “sober” genes, but which have been triggered by an environmental stress factor, such as pollution, contamination by heavy metals or pesticides.

But many other bird experts have expressed skepticism on that theory.

The ornithologist of the University of Auburn Geoffrey Hill, who has co-author a book with McGraW on the coloring of birds, He told the New York Times That if it were a genetic mutation, it would only expect to see the reddish orange on the parts of the bird that are normally black.

“Pigmentation is not very symmetrical and appears on the parts of a normal snowy owl that are white,” he said.

The ornithologist David Bird, a retired professor at McGill University in Montreal, says that Mcgraw is an expert and his theory makes sense, but he also has his doubts.

“There should be a sort of gene in the genetic composition of snowy owls to cause that clear orange color, which means that at a certain point we would have seen a few snow with a little orange on their plumage,” he said in one and -mail.

But Bird says he has never heard of another snowy owl with red spots or orange. Nor has the Raptor expert who conferred the Department of Natural Resources of Michigan, said Cleveland.

When it was reached for a comment from CBC, McGraw said that without obtaining a feather for analysis, there is simply no way of being sure.

Maybe it’s … De-Docry fluid?

Scott Weidensul, co-founder of Project Snowstorm, a group of voluntary research of Snowy Owl, says that his mailbox has been flooded by all types of “fa-facce” theories on Creamsicle, including what has transformed orange from eating too many prawns or that has intentionally committed the blood if his preach in his feathers as a kind of intense fashion.

Even if he cannot say with certainty what happened to Creamsicle, he feels quite sure that the bird was not born orange.

“The photos make it very evident that the dye has hit some feathers but that those underlying have been shielded, leaving white and sharp shadows that perfectly correspond to the shape of the colored feathers above,” he told CBC in one and -mail.

He says that his group has not painted feathers for monitoring purposes, nor the other research organizations he contacted.

But this does not necessarily mean someone vandalized the owl, he said.

“It seems clear enough that the bird has been sprayed, almost certainly by chance, with something that contained dye or paint,” he said.

“Given the position, the period of the year and the propensity of the snowy owls to remain around the airports, my colleagues from the Snowstorm project and I think the most probable cause was the liquidation of the airports, some formulations are red/orange.”

Anyway, Creamsicle looks like a-ok

Cleveland states that suspects that Project Snowstorm is “on the right path” with his theory of fluid mutations “, but we may never know for sure”.

This is because the only way to find out is to get the bird and test its moves move. And since Creamsicle seems to be “healthy and well”, they have no intention of disturbing it.

“This bird will probably return to Canada within a couple of weeks,” he said.

Weidicaul agrees that the owl is probably not in danger.

Based on the photos, suspects that Creamsicle is a youth male. And while being a strange color could “put a serious crimpature in his social life” when it is time to find a partner, he says that the bird will probably have moved and lost all his orange since then.

In the meantime, Maggert knows that he may not discover with certainty what is behind the unusual feathers of Creamsicle – and there is a part of her who hopes that he will never do it.

“I was so excited to finally have a good shot,” he said. “I like the mystery of it.”