A most unique crow

kc7gr

kc7gr

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I was out feeding some pistachios to the local crow flock today. Much to my surprise, a most uniquely-colored bird showed up. It was definitely a crow, but s/he had white wingtips.

I've never seen that particular color morph in an American Crow before. I wonder if I was looking at a hybrid of the American species (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and the Carrion Crow (Corvus corone).

I've tried to upload some photos, but I'm getting consistent upload failures for reasons unknown. Be happy to put them in the Gallery once the problem's fixed.

Thoughts?

Thanks.
 
I have seen some specimens of Carrion Crows with white feathers now and then, yet not with only white wingtips.

Another question in regard to crows: a few years ago, I saw some rather odd Hooded Crows in Helsinki; they had the 'normal' colour pattern and seemed to be grown-up, but were quite tiny in comparison to all the other specimens I had seen so far, almost the size of a Jackdaw. Any thoughts?
 
Sun Wukong said:
I have seen some specimens of Carrion Crows with white feathers now and then, yet not with only white wingtips.
Click to expand...

In the Uk you sometimes see an individual Rook, Crow or Jackdaw with white wing feathers. The wings aren't pure white, just the inner parts of the flight feathers. I believe this may be caused by nutritional stress/deficiency while the bird was being fed in the nest. They may be in fact be ex 'pet' birds which were raised by humans and not given a rich enough diet. I don't know if this condition last throughout life, as it would if the bird were a genuine partial albino.
 
That sound really neat. I'd like to see pics when uploading is working for you.
 
Photos are up!

OK - My thanks to those who offered helpful hints. I've uploaded three of the better photos to the United States - Wildlife gallery. Look for the thread 'Oddball crow.'

For future reference, and as a hint to other uploaders: What was causing the problem was the fact I was trying to upload full-sized images (3+MB per). The board didn't seem to like that.

Resizing them manually to 1024 x 768 cured the problem completely.

Happy viewing.
 
that's a really interesting crow. I thought you meant just the tips of individual feathers in the wing were white. Given that each of the entire feathers are white it looks like it may be caused by stress to the feathers as they were being produced (perhaps nutritional deficiencies) -- which is basically what Pertinax has already said I see :)
 
Another possibility is that it is a congenital condition where small patches of skin do not produce melanin, resulting in white skin and feathers. Similar condition quite common in humans where people have white streaks in their hair from childhood (as described in The Mallen Streak)
 
Having seen the photos, your crow has some pure white primay feathers in each wing. Could still be nutrional, or partial albinism for some other reason. the ones I see in Uk aren't like that, they usually have only the inner part of the flight feathers white- as if the colour has faded away as they grew.
 
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