Corcorax melanorhamphos

8 White-winged Chough at Watson, ACT

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Identification history

	Corcorax melanorhamphos	13 Aug 2019	natureguy
	Corcorax melanorhamphos	12 Aug 2019	kdm

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User's notes

One Chough had white feathers interleaved with the usual black all over the body. Is this a moult?

2 comments

ArcherCallaway wrote:

13 Aug 2019

Cool. It would have to be genetic I think. I've not encountered or heard of choughs like this - might interest people if you wanted to share this to the COG chatline?

DonFletcher wrote:

15 Aug 2019

Leucism (resulting in 'leucistic' animals) occurs infrequently throughout many vertebrates including humans (eg friends with a white spot in their dark hair). Its effect looks like a partial albinism. These individuals can be positively selected by breeders (eg think of piebald and skewbald horses) or nature (the white Bennett's wallabies on Maria Is) but more often white seems deleterious (eg the regularly reported white kangaroos around the ACT rarely seem to last). There are claims, e.g. by Jerry Olsen, ACT, that raptors target individuals in a group that look 'different', so if confirmed, such behaviour by predators would be expected to result in negative selection for leucism.

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