Last Saturday and Sunday, while doing my more-than-casual backyard
bird watching (for the WDFW Backyard Bird Survey) I saw a very
strange bird. My 3 1/2 year old birdwatching daughter was helping,
and said "Daddy, now there's five birds on the bird feeder." I left
the pancake batter, looked out the window, and sure enough the
thistle feeder was busy. And one bird was white!

I grabbed the binoculars, and gave it a good study. At first I
thought it was some sort of "albino" (I'm using that term because I
don't know much about albinism, color morphs, missing genes, etc.)
goldfinch, because the most visible markings were bright yellow
streaks on the wings. But after closer observation, and comparrison
with the several pine siskins on the feeder at the same time, I
became convinced it was a siskin.

It was almost entirely white, except for bright yellow wing bars, a
bit of yellow on the upper tail, some very light gray spots on the
side and flanks, and a bit of medium gray on the tail. But the head,
breast, back, parts of tail, and rump were stark white. The beak was
the same color as the other siskins, as were the eyes (dark).

The bird was around, with other siskins, on and off all day Saturday
and Sunday. Unfortunately I'm not home on weekdays during daylight
hours, so I don't know if it's been hanging around.

This happened in Milton, Washington, which is between Federal Way and
Puyallup. Has anyone else in the area seen this bird? Any thoughts or
brief explanations as to this little guy would be appreciated.

Two other fairly good additions on that count were a female
ring-necked pheasant (I get males more commonly), and a single
golden-crowned sparrow (last year I was seeing them much more
frequently and in larger numbers).

The other birds I saw on my count were the "normals": both
chickadees, juncos, robins, song sparrows, house finches, house
sparrows, spotted towhees, crows, flickers, and a yellow-rumped
(Audubon's) warbler.

Ken Steffenson
Milton, Washington
ksteffenson at watoxics.org