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A White Robin? (1 Viewer)

PaulS34

New member
I've been unable to identify a bird I saw this afternoon. Hope someone can help. It was feeding on the ground of the Algonquin Golf Club golf course in suburban St. Louis, MO. It was near a few robins and was behaving very similarly. The bird was also robin-sized, but white all over with minimal brown mottling. It's breast appeared to be orange, like a robin's, but I mostly saw it from the back. Most striking was when it flew away, its tail spread in a fan-shape and was white with three equally spaced bold black stripes running the length of the tail.
Any ideas?
 
Hi Paul and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum :t:

I'm gonna go ahead and move this thread to the Bird Identification section as it will get a lot more feedback there.
 
Just to clarify the stripes on the tail are running front to back? Could it have been a small raptor? Or more likely a Robin with pigmentation problems.
 
Just to clarify the stripes on the tail are running front to back? Could it have been a small raptor? Or more likely a Robin with pigmentation problems.

I'm still not 100% clear about the tail. Are you saying it was white with a few black feathers (= longitudinal stripes)? If so.a leucistic robin sounds like a good bet. On the other hand, if the tail was pale barred with black (stripes running transversely), then it's likely to be something else, maybe a small bird of prey (e.g., a Sharp-shinned Hawk) as you suggest.
 
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Thanks for the responses! It must have been a leucistic robin judging from the photo links. It was most similar to this one:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/1...ea such a bird existed. How common are they?
 
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