Friday, December 19, 2008

"Pied" Thrush

Received from Martyn Hayes today

Hi Nick,

This may be of intrest to you. I had a male Blackbird in the garden this morning that was "Pied" ie at least 75 percent white, it was patchy with one white tertial and then one black one etc and the body plumage was say two white feathers for every black one, most of the primaries were white although it's head was black. A really interesting bird, I don't know where it's come from as I know all the local Blackbirds (9), including one with a white feather above it's left eye, you get to recognise them when you see them nearly everyday, so presumably this pied bird has turned up during the cold spell. I remember the Pied Thrushes in Sri Lanka, perhaps I should put it on Birdline as a "Pied Thrush".............I've seen the comments about the white crow at Mixenden but did you know there was actually five in the early nineties, I had a photo somewhere of them all in one tree.

Regards

Martyn

3 comments:

Goldon Gordon said...

Hi Nick
There used to be a few Crows around the Park Wood/Crem area that had varying degrees of white feathers. One or two must have been at least 30% white feather cover scattered over wings and body. I had not seen any of these for 4 or 5 years before I left and I assumed it was genetic flaw in one small part of the population that died out. I reckon there were around 10 individuals at any one time that had these white feathers

AndyC said...

I Have a carrion Crow in Northowram with totally white wings,its been around for at least 7 years.I call it old white wings.Merry X-mas to you all

jasonov said...

if it has a well defined supercil - expect a load of twichers in yer flower bed