An ultra-rare black flamingo was spotted on the island of Cyprus, many believe this is the only bird of its type ever seen.
The flamingo spotted is believed to have a genetic condition called melanism which turns its pigments a dark color due to an over-generation of melanin.
“From what have seen on the Internet, there was only one other sighting … in Israel, so maybe this is the second one,” said Pantelis Charilaou, head of the environmental department of the British Sovereign Bases.
The bird looks completely black other than a tuft of white feathers on its back.
It was seen feeding with other normal colored flamingos on the banks of a lake in Cypris.
“A melanistic individual is a very, very rare sighting … basically its the opposite of an albino when the individual produces more melanin than normal,” Charilaou told Reuters Television.
It is believed this bird is the same one that was spotted in Israel back in 2014.
