Fw: [BIRDING-AUS] RE: Leucistic/Albino New Holland Honeyeaters in Geelong

Hi All, 

I went through my photos of the luecistic
NHHE's last night and found images of the second bird.  The second
bird has no black pigments at all, except for perhaps a slight mottling
on the breast - but this may be dirt (imagine how hard a coat like this
would be to keep clean! : )

The first bird, in contrast, has a s
black colouration at the end of its bill. The first bird looks like an
adult and the second a juvenile, so i'm thinking that the second bird could
be the offspring of the first, since i was reading that leucism is hereditary
and not dietary. 

I've added the images of the second
bird to the original page.  It can be found here:

http://www.deakin.edu.au/~pfuller/albino.html

Again, any comments appreciated.

Cheers, 

Peter


----- Forwarded by Peter
Fuller/Callista on 24/08/2005 09:51 AM -----

Sent by:

23/08/2005 05:56 PM

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Subject	[BIRDING-AUS] RE: Leucistic/Albino New Holland Honeyeaters in Geelong

Hi All, 

Today, down at the Barwon River in Geelong, Victoria, there were TWO Luecistic
( i think the word is) New Holland Honeyeaters in a group of about 10 or
so. 

They were feeding quite happily with the other NNHE's, and i only saw one
bird get a bit nasty with one of the birds. 

I found it odd that there was not one, but two birds with this rarity.
Would it be possible that these birds are twins? If not twins, you'd think
that these birds would be somehow related???  Or could this just be
a case of the dietary intake of the flock, with two birds producing leucistic
offspring? 

If anyone has any theories or info on what causes this characteristic in
birds, i'd love to hear  about it. 

I've posted a couple of pics here: 

http://www.deakin.edu.au/~pfuller/albino.html 
  
I think the two pics posted here are of the same bird...i may update the
sight with pix of the other bird if i manage to work out the difference
between them. 

Cheers, 

Peter