<html><head></head><body><div class="ydp5e2d4026yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Dear Nancy and Tweeters,</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">That is a nice photo of a leucistic Fox Sparrow, taken by Nancy Morrison. Cool-looking bird!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">From what I've seen, leucism occurs in Fox Sparrows more than any other species of Washington State bird that I can think of. I have been keeping track of this for a long time. Here are statistics of observations of leucistic species.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Fox Sparrow, 8 leucistic out of 1797 observations, or 0.445%;</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Dark-eyed Junco, 26 leucistic out of 10,150 observations, or 0.256%;</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><i>*Red-tailed Hawk, 16 leucistic (?) out of 9255 observations, or 0.173%, but this one does not count, because I think a lot of my early observations of </i><i>what I thought were leucistic Red-tails were actually light-morph Harlan's Hawks, and many of these 16 sightings were repeats</i><i> of the same bird;</i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Red-winged Blackbird, 21 leucistic out of 12,201 observations, or 0.172%; several of these were the spectacular birds that I like to call "Giant American Redstarts";</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><i>*Bald Eagle, 10 leucistic out of 7899 observations, or 0.1265%, but this one does not count, since most of the observations were of</i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><i> repeats of the same bird;</i></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">American Crow, 21 leucistic out of 18,521 observations, or 0.11%; most of these were the crows with what I call "Willet-wings", a variation depicted in the Sibley guide;</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><div>House Sparrow, 10 leucistic out of 10,780 observations, or 0.0927%;</div></div><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Canada Goose, 6 leucistic out of 6698 observations, or 0.0896%;</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">American Robin, 14 leucistic out of 20,668 observations, or 0.0677%; </span></span><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">European Starling, 9 leucistic out of 19,866 observations, or 0.0302%;</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Brewer's Blackbird, 13 leucistic out of 5720 observations, or 0.0174%;</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Song Sparrow, 2 leucistic out of 14,993 observations, or 0.0133%.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">In all, I've noticed leucism in 45 species of birds, but most of those were just one observation in a particular species. It seems to be a rather rare phenomenon, except in certain groups, such as New World Sparrows, Icterines, and waterfowl. </div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Probably the coolest one I've seen was a Cream-winged Cinclodes, way up in the Andes. The guide and the other birders in the group were mystified for quite some time as to the identity of that bird, which sported an all-white head!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Thanks to Marv Breece for getting me squared away on the light-morph Harlan's.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Yours truly,</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Gary Bletsch</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">PS Now I've been in Western New York for almost three and a half years, and have still not observed any leucistic Red Fox Sparrows. Then again, Fox Sparrows here are a rather uncommon species, unlike in Western Washington, where there seems to be one in every blackberry tangle in wintertime.</div></div></body></html>