Meet These Beautiful Gender-Defying Birds
Proof that there’s nothing more natural than breaking free of the binary.
When Jack messaged me last week saying “Oh fuck I just realized it's Gay Animal Month,” I can’t tell you the amount of joy it brought me. I’ve never needed—the WORLD has never needed—a celebration like this at a time like now. Let’s fucking go.
We’re going to circle back to your amazing gay pets in a separate post very soon. And for the record, I have an asexual (“possibly gay” according to my husband) black and brown cat and a gray and white deeply hetero cat. Big toxic male energy coming from that second one. We’re working on it.
Anyway, that’s a teaser for a future post, but today we’re actually staying in our regular wheelhouse and talking about our spiritual north star: birds. Not just any birds. Birds that peck gender norms to death, or maybe more accurately, birds that break the binary with the gentle flap of a wing—with results that are both extraordinary, and a testament to the fact that doing so is really no big deal.
Today’s blog was actually inspired by a story that resurfaced from 2023 about an “extremely rare” and very cool case of what’s known as bilateral gynandromorphism—aka a bird that’s half male and half female:
This green honeycreeper was spotted in Colombia and if you couldn’t already tell, its unique plumage showcases exactly what’s happening with its biology. The blue feathers on one side are typical of males and the green feathers on the other side are typical of females.
This was the second recorded case of bilateral gynandromorphism in a green honeycreeper, though the phenomenon also occurs in other birds, as well as other creatures like insects and crustaceans.
A few years ago, a stunning rose-breasted grosbeak gynandromorph was spotted in Pennsylvania, and the state was also recently home to a cardinal gynandromorph (I highly recommend reading this account from a birder about the “once-in-a-lifetime, one in a million bird encounter!”).
These birds sometimes get dubbed as “transgender” in media reports, which is a weird misnomer, especially because there are a lot of birds out there that fit that term better! Over the last several decades, scientists have observed cases among different species of birds where an individual will take on the behavior of the opposite gender.
There was the male hooded warbler in Cape Cod that acted like a female bird for years by building and sitting on nests (with eggs placed by other birds), and was accepted by different males over as a partner over the course of different seasons. It kind of rules reading about this chap who just did what he wanted to do and waited for everyone around him to catch up. And they did!
On a purely aesthetic front, different species of hummingbirds also engage in this role flexibility, with females displaying male characteristics in plumage, with males doing the same, though to a lesser extent. Scientists suspect that for the females, this is a survival tactic to help with gathering food and avoiding harassment. Unfortunately, that makes sense!
Not to be outdone, the white-throated sparrow has basically formalized its defiance to a simple binary. The seemingly plain songbird not only has a beautiful set of pipes but four sexes to boot. More accurately, each gender has two varieties—it’s fascinating! Don’t mess with this unconventional king.
We’ve written a lot over the years about birds with progressive gender dynamics but these birds go beyond, and it rocks. I have to wonder if we’ve overlooked them in the past as emblems of the kind of world we want to live in. There’s nothing more radical or inspiring than quietly overturning the societal systems and casually upending norms, and we applaud these gorgeous birds for doing just that. Happy Gay Animal Month!
Don’t forget to send us pics of your cute queer pets! Hit up Jack at jack@discourseblog.com.
A reminder: you can check out our complete Bird of the Week list here.
There's an artist who posts on Instagram as We Need to Go Outside (https://www.instagram.com/weneedtogooutside) who makes a great sticker featuring a white-throated sparrow wielding a flag reading "NATURE KNOWS NO BINARY!"
Seemed appropriate to share that here.