Bird ID white bird in back yard

[turtleboy]

Seen in back yard today. Goldfinch sized. Help.

[Steve Foss]

Looks an awful lot like an adult male McKay's bunting in breeding plumage, but it's hard to make out at this size. Where do you live? And please e-mail me the original. This is very small, and I'd like to have a look at the actual image to see if I can zoom in on it better.

[turtleboy]

This picture was emailed to a co-worker, was taken in her mother's back yard in Eagan, MN. Apparently spent part of today in the water feature there. I will email the image I have from that email, I don't know if a higher quality one is available but will find out tomorrow. Thanks for your help with this, BH

[Steve Foss]

Well, if you can track down the image that came out of the camera, that would be good.

[turtleboy]

Here is a better picture, same camera, taken today. The bird is still hanging around going between water fixture and seeds.

[image]http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid225/pf0719c0e389fdb8a6b889e8bccb1b976/ea12412b.jpg.orig[/image]

[Steve Foss]

It could also be a leucistic male goldfinch. That's a plumage condition of reduced pigment in feathers and animal fur, sometimes so much that it's white. It's not true albinism.

[iffy]

Thats really an odd but beautiful bird. A few years ago, in early spring, I had a flock of about 30-40 of those exact same birds land in a locust tree outside my window. I went out to get a better look as I had never seen any birds like these. They didn't hang around though, and promptly flew off. I looked in bird books but could find nothing about them there. I asked several people who might know what they were, but none had a clue. For a while I thought I must have been hallucinating! Whew! Now I know I wasn't. I hope someone here can identify those beautiful birds.

[turtleboy]

We have finally detirmined that this bird is a leucistic Junco. That detirmination was made with the help of Steve Foss and the observation that this bird is hanging out with a bunch of other Juncos, and in general behaving like the other Juncos. We figure that he knows what he is, even if we don't! Thanks Steve for your help. I agree, he does look like a McKays Bunting (Snow Bunting), but his behavior and continued presence tells us he is a Junco, and leucistic as you suggested. And Iffy, I'm not sure what you saw in your locust tree, but probably not Juncos. I occasionally get big flocks of waxwings feeding on berries in late winter, and they can be very tame letting you walk close enough that you can hear them munching. Or maybe it was a halucination!

[iffy]

Yikes... I sure don't think so! That was quite a few years after any heavy drinking. lol. And no, they weren't waxwings either. I can recognize those. These birds allowed me to approach to within 20 ft or so then just departed. Too bad I didn't have a camera. Those birds looked a whole lot like the picture in the previous posting.

[amoebus]

There was a l. Junco hanging around Gross golf course in New Brighton last spring/summer. They can be tough to identify because you don't know where the pigment is going to disappear. This case was pretty easy because it always hung with 20-30 'normal' Juncos.

[Steve Foss]

Good ID guys!

[MattWtech]

im sorry im kind of sheltered when it comes to terms, when you say leucistic , does that mean albino? or something of the sort?

[Steve Foss]

Leucistic birds lack some or most of the colored pigments in their feathers (or fur, with animals). Leucistic individuals retain their normal eye color. True albinos are missing ALL their colored pigments, and their eyes are pink. When most folks see a white bird or animal that isn't supposed to be white, they generally just call it an albino, though that's not always the case.