This cafe au lait Blue-winged Teal was just north of Kaplan today. Pale birds like this often called albino, but they're actually leucistic, which basically means they look whitish (leukos = white in Greek; leucistic is pronounced with the same beginning syllable as leukemia and leucocyte). Unlike albinos, leucistic birds don't have pink eyes.
The short and sweet of it is that it looked pretty cool. In flight it stood out among the hundreds of ducks it flushed with.
1 comment:
My buddy killed a teal on 12/16/12 Northwest of Church Point, LA. I stumbled across your picture and was wondering if this could be the same duck since you posted this on the 15th. they look identical. I tried to post a picture here, but it would not let me. If you would like to see it, you can send me your email address and I will reply with a picture.
fhhanley@yahoo.com
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