Subject: Re: albinism
Date: Mar 20 11:56:23 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


Well, an experimental technique has made itself clear. Bird banders, if
you are catching birds that are resident in your yard (i.e., you see them
regularly), why don't you pluck a single feather from each of several
places on the bird and see if they grow in white? On a moderately dark
bird, this should be quite obvious. Enough of such experiments would
answer a lot of the questions posed here. I'm entirely serious, although I
hope I'm not being politically (or environmentally) incorrect.

I will say that I already have some information about this. We get a lot
of birds in the Slater Museum that have lost and are regrowing tail
feathers (some or all of them from cats, I'll bet), and I haven't yet seen
one growing in white. I hadn't even thought about that before several
people mentioned the "white replaced feather" hypothesis, and, again, it
shows the value of this freewheeling communication.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416