BLACK AND WHITE BLACKBIRDS

I have counted eight bird’s nests in my garden and sheds this year – it’s one of the advantages of having a quiet garden. I always watch carefully at construction time and can see where the busy birds are going with beaks full of sheep’s wool, twigs and dead grass, and then I know to give that area a wide berth. Unfortunately, a little wren chose to nest just inside my wood shed this year so I haven’t been able to get any firewood in for the last couple of weeks. She looks lovely and warm in her cosy little nest while Yogi and I freeze indoors in the evening.

Blackbirds are such hard workers and can be seen going back and for in my garden with beaks full of bugs and worms now, obviously trying to keep hungry mouths fed. I have one male blackbird with a flash of white on his wing. He looks a bit like a magpie but isn’t. I mentioned it to a fellow bird lover and they told me about the black and white blackbird they had seen on their rounds recently. I asked good friend Iolo Williams what was happening with these birds and he said they are leucistic blackbirds. They have abnormal white or pale plumage due to a lack of melanin pigment, (called partial albino by the RSPB), and it is actually quite common in blackbirds and carrion crows. As it is caused by a genetic mutation, it’s not unusual to find several affected birds in the same area, as they are probably related.

Despite one Avian report claiming that only about 1 bird in 30,000 has leucistic or albinistic plumage, since talking to Iolo about them, I have also noticed an almost completely white blackbird not so far away from the cottage. Nature keeps teaching …