birding-aus

Mystery bird at Pt Cook

To: <>
Subject: Mystery bird at Pt Cook
From: "Philip A. Veerman" <>
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 17:27:12 +1000
By the description, I don't know that it is leucism. It seems to be melanin deficient, rather than yellow excess.
 
Philip
 
-----Original Message-----
From: <>
To: Carol Probets <>
Cc: m("vicnet.net.au","birding-aus");"> <m("vicnet.net.au","birding-aus");">>
Date: Tuesday, 1 June 2004 16:56
Subject: RE: [BIRDING-AUS] 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
--------------------------------------------
Birding-Aus is now on the Web at
www.birding-aus.org
--------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message 'unsubscribe
birding-aus' (no quotes, no Subject line)
to


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU