Tuesday Email: Nature News

Real or AI?

In early 2025, pictures purporting to show a bright orange snowy owl delighted and mystified corners of the internet.

The photos are real. The owl was spotted in Huron County, Michigan, with an orange-red coloring. Scientists aren’t sure why the owl looks that way; their theories range from genetic mutation to the chemical staining idea. John Pepin, a spokesperson for Michigan Department of Natural Resources, confirmed via email that “the snowy owl sighted and photographed in Huron County is indeed real.”

Multiple photographers have taken pictures of the bird.

Ornithologist Scott Weidensaul, who cofounded Project SNOWStorm, a research project about snowy owls, also said via email that he does not believe artificial intelligence could have created the widely circulated images of the bird. The feathers in the pictures are consistent with how they really lay and move — “every feather can move independently of each other.”

Photographer Bill Diller first published a picture of the bird on Facebook in late January. He said via email that locals call the bird “Rusty,” and he confirmed he first heard about the bird from his neighbor, as first reported by the New York Times. As reported by the New York Times, CBC, and other news outlets, scientists aren’t quite sure what caused the bird’s unique coloring.

Weidensaul believes a dye of some sort colored the bird’s feathers. The photos, according to him, possibly show the dye was “applied (by whatever means) when the bird was perched with its wings folded and most of its back and upper wing feathers clamped tight.”

“As the owl moves and has been photographed in various positions, the feathers move and reveal exactly the kind of white ‘shadows’ on lower feathers that were protected from the color,” Weidensaul said.

However, Kevin McGraw, who heads a biology department at Michigan State University and has researched bird coloring, hypothesized in local newspaper ‘Michigan Live’ that the coloring may be a genetic mutation.

However, he said via email that, without obtaining a feather from the owl for analysis, “it is difficult to make further assessments.” McGraw said he personally hasn’t seen the bird in person, writing:

Rusty coloring in owls can be due to melanin mutation, but there are many other hypotheses (e.g. chemical staining from airplane deicing fluid, from metal primer, or from Phos-Chek (wildfire retardant). One other suggestion about the animal having an unusual diet (i.e. high consumption of [orange or red] pigments) is unlikely in this case, given that owls do not deposit carotenoids in feathers and would not be expected to create the distribution of color seen in this bird’s feathers.

In mid-March, Diller spotted the owl again in Huron County, Michigan, and took more photos. Those images appeared to show the animal losing its orange coloration. However, he noted, it was unclear if “Rusty” was molting (shedding feathers to make way for new growth) or the possible dye was fading.