White hawk - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-

November 17, 2011

Recently we've received reports of an albino hawk in Addison County. Naturalist Charlie Browne from the Fairbanks Museum and I went down to look for him, and it didn't take us long. It's bright white body soaring across the sky is a sight that is hard to miss! But Charlie tells us it's doesn't appear to be an albino bird.

"This is a red-tailed hawk, and it does have a problem with the pigments that give it its color, but this particular bird does show patches of color intermingled with the white, which tells us it's not a true albino.

"It probably doesn't have pink eyes."

"It probably doesn't have pink eyes."

"Not that he's going to let us get close enough to see them!"

"This is called a leucistic hawk, and basically that means that the pigments that it produces to give it its color, are blocked before they reach the feathers. Those feathers grow in tracks up from the skin, so some of the tracks get a little color, and some of them don't get any and the ones that don't are pure white.

This is a real adaptive disadvantage for the bird, though. It stands out like a sore thumb, makes it wonderful for us to see, but it does have some drawbacks in terms of survival. These birds are very hard to see when they have their natural color, they blend in with tree trunks and branches, that gives them an advantage when they're hunting, and if they stand out like a sore thumb which this one does when we see him, it's tough to be a successful hunter."