![\"\"](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/files\/2012\/10\/OrangeHAWO.jpg\")
<\/a>Such variants occur regularly in Hairy Woodpecker populations in western North America and in the southern United States but this morph is a first for me in New England.<\/p>\nWoodpecker specialists have found some Hairy Woodpeckers stained with tannins from trees on their feathers, imparting a brown to cinnamon coloration.\u00a0 But the fairly even distribution of the buff on our woodpecker suggests the coloration comes from pigments laid down in the feathers.<\/p>\n
The aberrant plumage of this Hairy Woodpecker got me to reminesce about other birds I have seen with unusual appearances.<\/p>\n
Albino birds lack any pigment whatsoever in their feathers.\u00a0 Such birds lack the enzyme tyrosinase, an essential enzyme needed to make the pigment melanin.\u00a0 The feathers are therefore pure white.\u00a0 Albinos also lack coloration in their legs, feet and bill.\u00a0\u00a0 The eyes of true albinos appear pink because no melanin is present in the iris of a bird\u2019s eye, allowing the pinkish color of the blood vessels of the eye to be seen through the iris.\u00a0 The lack of melanin in the iris diminishes the vision of an albino.\u00a0 Albinos have it rough: their white plumage makes them conspicuous and their reduced visual acuity makes it harder to detect approaching predators.<\/p>\n
A bird with white feathers is not necessarily an albino.\u00a0 For example, a Snowy Egret has all white feathers.\u00a0 The bird does not deposit melanin in the feathers when they are being formed. However, the black color of the legs and the dark color of the eyes indicate that these long-legged beauties are not albinos.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had the pleasure of seeing an albino House Sparrow, conspicuous among a flock of 20 others in normal plumage.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also had a fleeting glimpse of a pure-white European Starling.<\/p>\n
But two other albinos are even more memorable, both seen during my college days.\u00a0 One was an albino Northern Mockingbird, a strikingly beautiful wraith.\u00a0 You have likely seen Northern Mockingbirds exposing their white wing patches with a distinctive two-step motion.\u00a0 The flashing white can be seen for quite a distance.\u00a0 Ornithologists are still not sure of the purpose of the behavior.\u00a0 I think it is used mostly to either court females or deter other males.\u00a0 Other ornithologists think otherwise, suggesting the display is used to scare insects, making them fly up and become easy prey for the mockingbird.<\/p>\n
Whatever the function of the display, I felt some empathy toward this albino mockingbird.\u00a0 It had the motion of displaying its wing patches down perfectly but of course the white patches were no different from the rest of the plumage.\u00a0 The bird did not have an inkling that it was colored differently from normal Northern Mockingbirds.<\/p>\n
The other albino was a bird seen in Salisbury, Massachusetts over a Presidents Day holiday.\u00a0 A group of us from Baltimore drove into New England in search of various northern owls.\u00a0 Snowy Owl was high on our list, most of us never having seen one before.<\/p>\n
Birders had reported several Snowy Owls in Salisbury and we were keen to find one.\u00a0 En route, we saw an all-white bird perched about half-way up a large oak tree.\u00a0 Remarking to ourselves that the perch seemed to be an odd place for a Snowy Owl (they are usually perched on or near the ground), we jumped out of our cars in the cold air and set up our scopes.\u00a0 It was not a Snowy Owl but rather a Red-tailed Hawk.\u00a0 It was a magnificent bird.\u00a0 We later found Snowy Owls but that albino red-tail remains a much more memorable bird.<\/p>\n
[First published on July 8, 2012]<\/p>\n\n
We have been having an odd visitor at our feeder.\u00a0 It\u2019s a male Hairy Woodpecker with a difference.\u00a0 Instead of black and white feathers and red on the nape, many of the typically white feathers are buffy in color. Such variants occur regularly in Hairy Woodpecker populations in western North America and in the southern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[479,430],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}