An Oxymoron and a Rare Bird: A White Black Phoebe at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

This was an extraordinary day. It's not all that often that you get to see a bird rare enough that you probably won't see it again in your life. But that's what happened. We were having another look at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge to check and see what new winter migrants have arrived. As we were getting ready to start the auto-tour loop, I saw a white bird in the bushes near the entrance sign.

Unless they are Snow Geese or Pelicans, white birds are kind of unusual in our area. It's not hard to figure out why...they can't hide from predators very well, seeing as how we never have snow. What made this bird even more unusual was that it was just the right size to be a flycatcher, and it was behaving just like a flycatcher, perching and then flying out for bugs and then returning to the perch. But flycatchers aren't white, especially the flycatcher known as the Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans). The picture below shows the normal appearance of a Black Phoebe.

I could barely understand what I was seeing, given that I am still a bit new at the bird-watching business. But when I got the angle in the picture below, I was strongly suspecting that I had found a leucistic Black Phoebe, even though I had never heard of such a thing in the past. I tried googling right then in the field the term for a white color in birds but mistook leucocratic instead of leucistic, and kept getting references to granitic rocks instead of anything having to do with birds (I figured it out later at home).

Leucism is different than albinosim. Albino animals lack melanin, a natural pigment that provides dark color. They are generally pure white, and their eyes will be pink (click here for an example of an albino California Scrub Jay). Leucistic birds have melanin, but they are inefficient at using it in their feathers, so they may show some color, as seen in the Black Phoebe I saw today.

I could find only a few references to leucistic Black Phoebes so I suspect that unless I see this particular individual on our future trips to the Merced NWR, I'll probably never see one again. They seem to be pretty rare. But "White Black Phoebe" makes for a great example of an oxymoron.