Unusual Bird: Raven with White Feather
The raven on the left has one completely white tail feather.
Categories: Leucistic birds
The raven on the left has one completely white tail feather.
Categories: Leucistic birds
Comments
4 comments on “Unusual Bird: Raven with White Feather”
Love this. An writing a story about ravens and a dysfunctional family. One of the ravens has a white feather. Then I wondered what that really looked like and I saw your photo. Thank you, made my day.
Just googling and found this link.
On my walk this morning I saw for the fifth time a Raven with a considerable amount of white feathers. Mostly on his or her Tail feathers at the top end.
Also has white on the wings. It’s quite unique..
That is a condition called leucism. Leucism is partial loss of pigments in an animals body, resulting in birds having some white feathers.
This crow might have been attacked by something and lost that tail feather. When the feather regrew, it regrew as white. It happens sometimes, but at its next molt if that is the case then its feather should go back to normal color. It could be leucism but as that appears to be the only white feather, it’s unlikely.