While bird-watching in Erie, Pennsylvania, husband and wife Jeffery and Shirley Caldwell spotted and photographed "an incredibly rare wild cardinal." How rare, you might ask? For one thing, the male cardinals are categorized as having the easily recognizable red plumage while the females' plumage is more of a duller brown or yellow color, and this bird is half and half, directly split down the middle!

This kind of bird is referred to as "bilateral gynandromorphic," meaning that the bird contains both male and female characteristics, making it, in other words, intersex.

Another thing that makes this special bird "incredibly rare" is that while finding a bilateral gynandromorphic bird is certainly uncommon, it is, in fact, possible but usually exclusively unseparated from a biologically sterile sentence. However, this bird's case is slightly different, as it is half female, notably on its left side, and according to Daniel Hooper, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, "only the left ovary in birds in functional."

So, needless to say, it is very possible for this unique bird to reproduce one day soon! We don't have to wonder who will be this bird's mate in all of this, as when the Caldwells were keeping track of the "unusual avian," they saw that it was often spotted with a male suitor…

It's during moments like this when you wonder to yourself how a bird of two sexes is getting more attention than you are getting yourself these days.

Shirley Caldwell says that she is glad that this bird is lucky enough not to be lonely, and she is holding out hope that these two lovebirds will be starting a family this upcoming summer. I'll say that she is not alone in her and her husband's prayers. I don't know what it is about animal couples, but I'm already shipping this one and wishing it a very happy life together with little hatchlings of their own, as I did similarly in a previous article about another bird couple.