A rare black flamingo was spotted on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Wednesday.
The flamingo, whose image is making the rounds on the Internet, is thought to have a genetic condition known as melanism.
"A melanistic individual is a very, very rare sighting ... basically its the opposite of an albino when the individual produces more melanin than normal," Pantelis Charilaou, head of the environmental department of the British Sovereign Bases,
told Reuters of the black flamingo.
Officials are only aware of one other black flamingo sighting, in Israel, Charilaou said. Some speculate that the bird may be the same one seen in Israel last year.
The bird was seen feeding
with other flamingos on the banks of a salt lake, The International Business Times reported. Officials spotted the bird when they set up fieldscopes to count flamingos in the area.
Martin Hellicar, with the conservation group BirdLife Cyprus,
told The Telegraph black flamingos aren’t unheard of throughout the world, and the individual spotted this week likely was migrating to a breeding area in Turkey.
Twitter users seemed fascinated by the rare bird.
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