Negative Image (Magpie with Inverted Color Scheme)

[intaglio]

My work enables me to drive about and yesterday I saw a most unusual Magpie. It was not an albino but was a magpie in negative. The majority of it's plumage was white but it had black flashes on its wings and tail. I'll try and get a picture.

Does anyone know how common this sort of thing is?

 

[Fats_Tuesday]

My work enables me to drive about and yesterday I saw a most unusual Magpie. It was not an albino but was a magpie in negative. The majority of it's plumage was white but it had black flashes on its wings and tail. I'll try and get a picture.

Does anyone know how common this sort of thing is?

Albinism (total lack of pigment) and leucism (partial lack of pigment) are quite common in the bird world. There's a photo of a leucistic magpie at:

http://www.astro.utu.fi/hlehto/photo/color/picpic3.shtml

Are you sure you didn't see a hooded crow?

http://www.arthurgrosset.com/europebirds/hoodedcrow.html

Please try and get a photo of the bird if you can.

 

[intaglio]

Haven't been able to get a shot yet, was working a different area of the county.

Definitely not a hooded crow; they are rarer than choughs down here; and not leucastic either. The majority of the plumage was white. Black wing flashes in the place you see white ones in a regular magpie and the same colour reversal in the tail.

I saw in the garden of a house by a brook between St Day and United Downs. The brook itself, like many in the area, suffers severe heavy metal polution - certainly copper and probably arsenic.

 

[carole]

Magpies are a pretty distinctive shape, so it probably is an albino or partial albine.

Has anybody seen albinos in other species?

Carole

 

[marion]

Thereare total albino sparrows round the school near me,they look like white canaries. I saw a crow recently with a white wing.

 

[Anonymous]

I saw in the garden of a house by a brook between St Day and United Downs. The brook itself, like many in the area, suffers severe heavy metal polution - certainly copper and probably arsenic.

on the little lane between chacwater and st day?... or by the little garage i tak eme car too... u may see me and harry wandering about waiting for it to be serviced sometimes... i rmemeber seeing an odd magpie there... white with black bits in all the wrong places, waht threw me was it didnt have along tail tho.. but it looked like a juvenile so it may have not grown it when i saw it..