Hi tweeters,

Just my usual post about unusual birds. I've had a Black-capped Chickadee
in my yard with an almost completely white tail all winter, quite
conspicuous when it flies across the green background. It's nesting in a
box on a neighbor's house. I've had chickadees in my neighborhood for years
with varying amounts of white on them, maybe as many as a half-dozen birds,
but this one is more striking than most.

I'm writing because I saw my first white-marked *Chestnut-backed* Chickadee
today, at Square Lake, Kitsap Co. (sun! dragonflies! yeah!). It and its
mate were obviously prospecting for nest sites. And amazingly, this bird
had exactly the same almost-all-white tail as the Black-capped, something
to knock your eyes out as it flies in front of you or overhead against the
(rare) blue sky. In both of these birds, you can see how frayed the tail
is, without its normal protective melanin pigments.

What's going on here? Are chickadees hybridizing extensively with juncos
(imagine populations of black-capped juncadees and dark-eyed chickos)? Why
all these albino chickadees? Relaxed predation in the city, as in London,
with all its partial albinos? But the Chestnut-backed was way out in the
country. Why the tail? I've never seen a white-tailed partial albino
before, to my recollection, and now two chickadees just a few days apart. I
don't think we can blame either El Nio or the Indian nuclear tests for
these babies. Curiouser and curiouser describes it, but who knows, maybe we
haven't seen the curiousest yet.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html