Mystery bird at Pt Cook

What causes ?leucism? in birds?

There was a leucistic Superb Fairy Wren
at the You Yangs in Victoria last year (possibly still there).  It
was a really amazing bird to see, and almost seemed like a new species.

The You Yangs is only 50km from Point
Cook, so would environmental factors play a part in the development of
this syndrome?

Peter

Carol Probets <>
Sent by:

01/06/2004 04:45 PM

To
cc
Subject	RE: [BIRDING-AUS] Mystery bird at Pt Cook

Almost 20 years ago I was regularly seeing a leucistic
New Holland 
Honeyeater in heathland at Mt Victoria (in the Upper Blue Mountains, 
NSW). This bird was bright white all over, except for the normal 
yellow on the wings and tail, and a faint smudge of grey around the 
face where it's usually black. With this colour scheme the bird 
almost glowed. It seemed to interact normally with the other New 
Hollands. I still have a couple of slides of the bird which were 
taken by a friend.

As chance would have it, a couple of years later I saw another 
similar bird at Katoomba (which is 15km from Mt Vic).

Cheers

Carol

Carol Probets
Blue Mountains NSW
100km west of Sydney


Rohan Clarke wrote:
>It is almost certainly a leucistic New Holland Honeyeater that I 
>found and photographed near the last carpark at the beach BBQ area
>last week. It has a black head and yellow patches in the wing and 
>tail but the rest of the bird's plumage is cream. When I get around
>to converting the images from raw format to jpg I'll send you some
>record shots.
>Regards
>Rohan
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