Leucistic Spotted Towhee colour changes

[imperialbirders]

Our shy Leucistic Spotted Towhee is still around accompanied by the many Spotted Towhees visiting our back yard and scratching around our plants making their usual mess but so much fun to watch. The rain today has the birds becoming quite active digging in the soft dirt. With the dozen or more Spotted Towhees around our yard, we have been watching the colour development on the Leucistic Spotted Towhee that we first saw at the end of May this year. His colours moved from all blonde to some dark Towhee features but he is still very pale compared to his brothers. You can see this distinctly when he flies with the others as his back and wing feathers are very blonde and white while the others are dark and black. As I mentioned before, this is the second Leucistic Towhee we have seen in the past few years, but the first one was not seen after about a month.

Posted are some photos on Flickr.


flic.kr/p/YRckhP

flic.kr/p/YRcouv

flic.kr/p/XBgP8k

[expiallyd]

Nice to see that it has survived this long; since it is not as well camouflaged as other towhees, you might expect a predator to have grabbed it by now.