Blackbird colour change. (1 Viewer)

This afternoon I gazed out of my lounge window and noticed a male Blackbird on the lawn. As it hopped around I noticed that the tail was unusual, in that the outer tail feather on either side was totally White. this is the first time i,ve seen this on any black bird other than Crows,Jackdaws & Rooks. Have any of you members ever seen this. Could this be due to the food that is now being eaten, that we tend to throw out instead of being reliant on finding natural food. Roly(Bellow)|:S|

Probably nothing to do with the food, just a bit of albinism. It can throw up some wierd combinations...

It's very common to have partial albino birds and that includes Blackbirds. This is a Blackbird I photographed last month.

Its possible the white “ albinism “ may increase in time. A friend and I were ringing on the North Norfolk coast back in the 1990s when we caught a kestrel and blackbird in the same net. The blackbird was badly raked across the back by the kestrels claws. We were unsure about ringing it , but decided to in the end. On release the blackbird male just sat in a bush beside us for several hours without moving and was still there when we packed up so I did not expect it to survive.

It was mid October and despite bi weekly ringing sessions for the next 6 weeks we saw no further sign of the bird.

The following year to the same week we recaught the blackbird in the same net position. This time it had several white patches on its back . A year later and again three years later we retrapped the bird , each time with increasing amounts of white on its back.

The other interesting thing was it was so regular on migration always passing through out site ( just behind the sea wall ) to be caught in the same week ( mid October ) .

O and the kestrel had been ringed in Holland.

Thanks Guys, very interesting to hear your views. Roly(Bellow)