ML641771880

Detalles de la observación

Just on the way out for the evening, and spotted what appeared to be a small entirely-light coloured bird moving in the ornamental grasses beside the driveway. Unsure of what this could possibly be, I ran back inside and grabbed the camera to try to get some sort of doc shot. When I saw the bird again, I noticed that plumage was actually a very very light yellow, with portions of the head and wings that appeared to be completely white (my initial impression was that the bird was entirely white), and caught glimpse of fine bill. My first thought was this was a very very washed out yellow warbler - but it vocalized and confirmed it was actually coye. I was able to capture a number of photos that show it from a few different angles. I have observed and taken photos of other songbirds here in NS with unusual white patching (i.e. leucsitic) - including amro, chsp, deju and bcch. This is the first warbler I believe that I've seen, and the first bird I've seen that was so dramatically/entirely different than the usual plumage. Hoping it survives and gets photographed somewhere and posted to eBird again - should be easy to recognize if so! I did search the Macaulay Library for other aberrant plumaged individuals of this species. I only found one other that looked anything like this. It was photographed on Dec 20 2014 in California, and was described as being a "canary yellow semi-leucistic individual" https://ebird.org/checklist/S20966849. I will add plenty of photos (of varying quality) - hopefully useful to others who are interested currently or who may find them useful in the future when comparing with aberrant plumaged birds.