Last week I wrote about Winter Cardinals and how majestic they were – a vivid cardinal red against the backdrop of white snow. Charles Crenshaw sent me a picture of a white cardinal, another beauty. I have never before seen a white cardinal, or mostly white. Some might think it to be an albino, but the cardinal in the picture is not an albino because albino birds and animals are entirely void of any pigments. They are all white and with pink eyes.
The bird in the photo is leucistic, a genetic mutation.
Leucism results in partial loss of pigmentation in a bird or animal, like a piebald deer, mostly but not all white. An albino bird would have white or pink everything – feet, beak, all feathers and their eyes.
Regardless, the mostly-white cardinal is lovely, and appears to be a male, since it has a red feather or two on its crown. The females have all brown feathers on top.
If this male mates with an ordinary female, odds are the babies will be normally colored cardinals. Nature is most interesting indeed.