Leucistic House Finch

In a cunning segue from yesterday's post today's feature is a leucistic House Finch. When I saw this white finch this morning I nearly fell off my perch. Usually the male of this species has lots of red feathers and the female is like the brown bird pictured to the right. Leucism is when all or part of an animal is white. It differs from albinism in that the eyes are normally colored, not pink or red as with albinos.

Leucistic Fox Sparrow

I first caught a glimpse of this bird a few weeks ago while he was hopping around in the back yard. Then I saw him again at the bird feeder but both times he came and went too quickly for me to capture a photo. I didn't know what kind of bird this was, only that it was something I had not seen before. Yesterday he visited the feeder again and I had my camera nearby to get the above photo. I sought some identification help from a local bird-watcher's site and learned a new word. This is not a new species but a genetic pigment variation known as leucism. The bird above is a leucistic Fox Sparrow. Leucism is a little like albinism but not quite the same. For the technical details I'll refer you to this article in Wikipedia. The small photo to the right is a normal Fox Sparrow.