Wild words: Leucistic

14 Wednesday Mar 2018

Tags

#WildWords, birding, birdwatching, blackbird, leucism, leucistic, leucistic blackbird, wild words

Leucistic: Adjective; (of an animal) [or other creature] having whitish fur, plumage, or skin due to a lack of pigment (Oxford Dictionary).

180314 leucistic blackbird (1)

It’s not easy being different as this leucistic black-and-white Blackbird seems to be discovering. I’ve spotted it several times in and around a neighbour’s backyard in recent days, usually sitting alone, looking a little bereft. Once it tried to approach first a male and then a female Blackbird, adopting the submissive posture a young bird would adopt to beg food from its parents, but the other birds totally rejected it and flew off.

I’ve posted about leucistic birds before: a Crow here, and a Jackdaw was the star here.

A leucistic crow

04 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

birding, birdwatching, British birds, Carrion crow, Corvus corone, leucism, leucism in birds, leucistic crow

180104 Leucistic crow (5)

I posted a photo of this splendid leucistic Carrion crow (Corvus corone) on my new ‘Birding 2018’ page, after seeing him for the second time on a recent walk around Cardiff Bay, where he appears to frequent the area around the Norwegian Church.

I write ‘he’ but ‘he’ may well be a ‘she’, as I’m not sure how to tell the gender of crows. It’s certainly a handsome creature and I decided it was worth a post of its own. As you can see from my photos, the leucism seems to be restricted to its wings.
(If you’re not sure what leucism is, I wrote about it in an earlier blog post here.)

180104 Leucistic crow (4)

A wagtail but which?

23 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

birdwatching, Grey wagtail, leucism, Leucistic grey wagtail, Motacilla alba yarrellii, Motacilla cinerea, Pied wagtail, wagtail

I’m sure you’ve all seen wagtails of some description. They’re those cute little birds with the long tails that continuously bob up and down, seemingly not able to sit still – my mother would’ve said they had ants in their pants! Wagtails come in several varieties; on the left below is a Pied wagtail (Motacilla alba yarrellii) and on the right a Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea). Nothing unusual here. But then …

This little birdie was on the rooftop of my neighbour’s garden studio a couple of days ago.

161023c-wagtail

It sat, bobbing and calling, for about 10 minutes, so I was able to watch and get some photos (though it was distant and through double glazing, so my images are not the best). Though the colours of both wagtail species vary as the birds mature and through the seasons, this little one appeared to have the head of a Pied wagtail and the body of a Grey wagtail. So, I tweeted photos to the RSPB (The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and they responded that it was ‘either a partially leucistic Grey wagtail or colour variation due to being between plumages or a geographical variation and the Grey wagtail has flown over from a different continent.’ It’s one of Nature’s little mysteries …

Leucism in birds

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

birding, birds, birdwatching, blackbird, British birds, crow, jackdaw, leucism, leucistic jackdaw

Little did I realise that I was stepping into a definition minefield when, after finding an oddly coloured jackdaw earlier this week, I decided to find out more about leucism. The word is a relatively new one – it isn’t, for example, included in the online Oxford Dictionary, and scientists seem to disagree about its actual meaning and about what causes the condition.

a leucistic crow. It had more white patches not visible in this photo.

One source says the plumage of leucistic birds is pale or washed out though the normal pattern and colour is discernible, another reports that the cells of the affected plumage lack the ability to produce melanin and the lack of melanin produces white feathers, and yet another states that leucism is caused by a reduction in several types of pigment, not just melanin. The researchers at Cornell Lab of Ornithology even devoted a whole web page to citing the literature of disagreement.

Leucism is very common in blackbirds. This bird only has very small white patches.

So, rightly or wrongly and very simply, I’m defining my leucistic birds as those whose feathers would normally be black or some other colour but are actually white (but they’re not albino, as they have their normal eye colour). And here they are …