Have you ever seen a leucistic bird in the wild? The turkey in the photo above is leucistic, which is defined as an abnormal condition of reduced pigmentation affecting various animals (such as birds, mammals, and reptiles) that are marked by overall pale color or patches of reduced coloring. It’s caused by a genetic mutation which inhibits melanin and other pigments from being deposited in feathers, hair, or skin.

Leucism is sometimes confused with albinism, but leucism relates to diminished amounts of melanin as well as other pigments. Albinism is characterized by a complete lack of melanin. A key distinguishing characteristic between leucistic organisms and albinos: albinos have pink or red eyes while leucistic individuals retain normal eye color.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology on its Project Feederwatch page, “Albinistic birds have pink eyes because without melanin in the body, the only color in the eyes comes from the blood vessels behind the eyes. It is possible for a bird to be completely white and still have melanin in the body, as when a white bird has dark eyes. In that case, the bird would be considered leucistic because the mutation only applies to depositing melanin in the feathers, not the absence of melanin in the body.”

Got all that? Good, because there will be a quiz, ha!

I haven’t personally witnessed many leucistic birds, but I know others of you have. The turkey in the photo above wandered into my neighborhood a few years ago and started grazing on my neighbor’s front lawn. I quickly grabbed my camera because I knew I’d unlikely see such a leucistic specimen again. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed this partially leucistic Mourning Dove mixed in with the flock that visits my patio every morning. (Sorry about the photo quality; I took this through a window.)

Leucistic Mourning Dove

In this case, clearly this Mourning Dove is only partially leucistic. Once you start reading up on the topic of abnormal coloration in birds, you’re off on a wild ride with much, much more information available out there. If you’re interested, David Sibley has some great information here.

I first became fascinated by leucism when I saw a squirrel in my yard that was completely unlike all the other gray squirrels I saw daily. I started calling it Blondie because it looked like a blond squirrel. I knew it wasn’t albino because it had dark eyes, not red. At the time, I’d never heard of leucism but I did know that albino individuals had red eyes and this squirrel did not, so it had to be something else. I poked around on the internet for a bit and finally discovered leucism. Check out the photos below:

Ever since the squirrel graced my yard, I’ve been fascinated by leucism. It occurs in all types of animals, including birds, mammals and reptiles. 

For the past two years, a leucistic hummingbird has been a showstopper at the University of California Santa Cruz Arboretum. The Birding California Facebook page was a veritable billboard of photos of the bird taken by dozens of people who made the trek to see it (I did not; I have a bad back that prevents me from traveling that far). Needless to say, trying to ID a hummer without having the fine distinctions of coloration that enable you to ID an Allen’s from an Anna’s made it a difficult task. Most people seemed to settle on Anna’s.

Here are a couple of photos of it that I grabbed off Google Images:

But wait! Look at this, which I also just discovered while Googling the Santa Cruz hummer. An actual albino hummer!!! See that red eye? Wow!

Now, I can’t seem to figure out how to start typing again below the image with a left-justified margin, so I’m going to just have to fill out this space with text until 

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page to begin typing again normally. Does anyone know what happened there? When I inserted the photo, it automatically right-justified it and forced a wrap-text feature I didn’t choose. Oh, well.

I Googled some other leucistic bird photos which I share below. Some are, as you see, partially leucistic (research also reveals that these partial specimens are also sometimes called piebald). It’s fascinating to look at these birds and realize how much we rely on color and markings to identify birds.

Just for fun, I’m going to omit the bird IDs in the captions to let you see how well you can ID each of them without the familiar color clues. (I told you there would be a quiz!) Their IDs appear at the end.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

How did you do? Did you get them all? They started out pretty easy, but then there are a couple of challenges, right? Ok, here are the answers:

1. American Robin  (everyone got that, I bet.)

2. Red-breasted Nuthatch

3. Dark-eyed Junco

4. American Crow (I know you got this one.)

5. Barn Owl (You did NOT miss this one.)

6. Red-winged Blackbird

7. Another, whiter Dark-eyed Junco

8. House Sparrow (This one wasn’t easy.)

9. Black-capped Chickadee (Did anyone get this one? Hard.)

10. Common Snipe 

If you got them all, kudos to you. You’re a better birder than me. The juncos, sparrow and chickadee were challenging. 

So, wrapping up, leucistic birds and animals of all kinds are out there and while not plentiful, they’re not entirely uncommon. Albino individuals are much less common and fairly rare. Have you seen either a leucistic or albino bird? Have you seen an oddly-colored bird in the past that you wonder in retrospect whether it may have been a leucistic bird? By all means, tell us about it.

I realize that this topic today doesn’t lend itself to sharing lots of photos of such birds because not all of us have seen them. So, as always, tell us what you have seen and what’s going on in your birding world. Share photos if you’ve got ‘em and use this as an open thread!