Hi,
For over a decade there has been a white, but not albino, red tail
on the west side of the town of Lodi, hanging around near Shaw Road. I
have heard it is there year round but we don't drive by often enough in
daylight in winter to confirm that it overwinters there. We have,
however, seen it often in the spring/summer/fall. It has a dark eyes,
dark beak, and yellow legs, but other than that it appears to be all
white. According to a landowner there, as of this past October:
The white hawk is fine, we see it and it's normally colored offspring
regularly. I'm not sure about the lifespan of a redtail, but this one
is at least 11 years old.
Assuming it is still there as usual, that makes a 5th completely
white one in the area. When we first saw it a nearly a decade ago, I
googled around and found several reports & photos of leucistic red-tails
all over the country, so they were not unknown even then, but it does
seem like a lot have popped up locally. Maybe it is a recessive genetic
trait and there are enough genes floating around in the local gene pool
that they are more common locally, like black squirrels in New England?
Would there be any evolutionary pressure against a white red tail?
There might not be any reason for them to be selected out of the
population - the one in Lodi seems to have no trouble coming up with
mates & successfully fledging young.
Alicia
John and Sue Gregoire wrote:
While birding for the GBBC this weekend, we found another completely white
leucitic
Red-tailed Hawk on Black Rd, Town of Hector. This makes the 4th completely white
red-tail this winter that we have found or know of. Others were an albino near
the
race track (Watkins Glen), one leucistic bird in Candor, one in Whitney point
and
this latest one a few miles from home.
We worked with eagles and other raptors in the Chesapeake Bay area and banded
thousands at Cape May for several years before arriving here in 1986 and had
never
seen such white raptors. In fact, the only leucistic bird in our memory was a
partial on a cardinal in Maryland. Since then, we had seen only a few partially
leucistic passerines in this area and one other leucistic hawk (the Ithaca
Red-tail
of a few years ago). Now in one season here are 4! Couple that with the several
reports of leucism in passerines and one begins to wonder...
We also had a rare pheasant yesterday, a Bald Eagle adult over Ed Gates' farm in
Burdett Saturday afternoon and 190 Snow Buntings on Bergen Rd which is about a
mile
from here. During our road trip we also found some 2,900 Redheads and 99 Horned
Larks among the many other excellent birds..
Best,
John and Sue
--
John and Sue Gregoire
Field Ornithologists
Kestrel Haven Avian Migration Observatory
5373 Fitzgerald Road
Burdett,NY 14818-9626
Website: http://www.empacc.net/~kestrelhaven/
"Conserve and Create Habitat"
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