{"id":155424,"date":"2024-03-14T06:03:18","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T12:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=155424"},"modified":"2024-03-14T07:16:20","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T13:16:20","slug":"yesterdays-unilaterally-leucistic-red-winged-blackbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/14\/yesterdays-unilaterally-leucistic-red-winged-blackbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Yesterday’s Unilaterally Leucistic Red-winged Blackbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen a couple of other leucistic Red-winged Blackbirds in the past but none were as boldly marked as this one.<\/p>\n

Yesterday afternoon, during a slight break in our blustery, snowy, windy weather, I visited some of our local ponds to look for any interesting birds that might be moving through. I found several of them but the one I found most interesting was a leucistic<\/a><\/span><\/span> adult male Red-winged Blackbird that stood out like the proverbial sore thumb.<\/p>\n

First, because some readers might not be very familiar with Red-winged Blackbirds, let’s see what the vast majority of adult males look like.<\/p>\n

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Adult males are glossy black with epaulets of red bordered with yellow on the wrist (bend) of the wing. Normally there isn’t a speck of white in their plumage, other than the shiny rachis (shaft) of primary feathers that can appear almost white in the right light.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

And that’s why this guy caught my eye yesterday afternoon. This is one of the first shots I got of him as he appeared to be looking for early-emerging insects on a phrag stem. Even with his wings folded his white primaries stood out in an almost shocking manner.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

For a few moments he seemed intent on displaying his red and yellow epaulets while singing, as if to prove that he had more going for him than just white primaries.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

For the few seconds I had him in my viewfinder the light was awful. It was actually snowing when I took these photos, as evidenced by the snowflakes in front of his upper neck and near the end of his tail.<\/p>\n

I really wanted to see his left wing open so I could tell more precisely how much of that wing was white. But in this light, when he took off my active focus point was unable to track him so the ‘best’ shot I got was soft. So soft it’ll probably make your eyes water as you try to bring it into focus.<\/p>\n

But I’m going to include it anyway because it’s the only photo I got that shows the true extent of his leucism.<\/p>\n

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1\/1250, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I think the leucism pattern in his left wing is really interesting.<\/p>\n

Red-winged Blackbirds have ten primaries and nine secondaries. It appears to me that his outermost primary is black and the rest are as white as the driven snow, except for a proximal portion of one of them. And the distal portion of one of his secondaries is also white. In other photos I could tell that the rest of his body, including his right wing, is covered with normally colored feathers.<\/p>\n

I think leucism, especially in birds, is fascinating. Which explains why I was so disappointed when this last shot turned out to be disgustingly soft.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen a couple of other leucistic Red-winged Blackbirds in the past but none were as boldly marked as this one. (five photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,395,390],"tags":[1936,2293,7371,7370,211,7373,7372,311],"class_list":["post-155424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-red-winged-blackbirds","tag-agelaius-phoeniceus","tag-epaulet","tag-how-many-primaries-and-secondaries-do-red-winged-blackbirds-have","tag-leucistic-red-winged-blackbird","tag-male","tag-proximal-and-distal","tag-rachis","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/red-winged-blackbird-8053-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-EqQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155424"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155459,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155424\/revisions\/155459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}