Scientists discover an adorable bird that actually represents 3 species in one

Everyone may be obsessed with the Mandarin Duck in New York lately, but another bird deserves your attention.

According to a statement from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a yellow, black and white bird found in Pennsylvania is actually a hybrid of three different species.

Lowell Burket, an extremely observant bird watcher, saw the male bird in the Roaring Spring Borough in May. He noted that the bird had the physical attributes of the Blue-winged Warbler and Golden-winged Warbler, but that it was singing as a third species, the Brown-sided Warbler. The bird became interested enough that after taking pictures and a video, he contacted Cornell's Fuller Biology laboratory.

"I tried to give the email a little intellectual sound so that they do not believe I was a crackpot," he said in the statement.

Fortunately, the lab did not think that Burket was a headache and researcher David Toews soon contacted him. Together they found the bird and took a blood sample and took steps for identification purposes.

In the end, Burket's suspicions were right. DNA analysis showed that the mother of the bird was a hybrid between the Golden-winged Warbler and a Blue-winged Warbler, while the father was a Brown-sided Warbler. The results of the analysis were published this week in the scientific journal Biology Letters.

The paper notes that the mixture is particularly important because the mother and father of the bird were not only different species, but also different kinds. Golden and blue winged warblers are both members of the genus Vermivora, while the brown warblers are part of the Setophaga genus.

Researchers suspect that this three-way hybridization eventually occurred in part because of the decline in the number of Golden-winged Warblers in the local population, leaving females with fewer potential partners. In response, they can "make the most of a bad situation" by selecting partners outside their own species and genres, the researchers wrote.

As for the new rare hybrid, it enjoys a milder weather.

"The bird was released with a [United States Geological Survey] aluminum strip and was only seen on the property until the end of August, after which it was no longer seen, "Toews told HuffPost in an email. "Presumably, he migrated south for the winter!"