The uncommon specimen appears to have a condition known as leucism, and could be the same bird hatched earlier this year on the Kenai Peninsula.
A white raven takes flight with a black one from a rooftop in Midtown Anchorage on Tuesday. The white raven appears to be leucistic, or lacking in melanin pigment.
“It looks like a leucistic bird, so a bird that’s lacking melanin in its feathers,” said Lisa Pajot, a volunteer with a local avian rehabilitation organization,The condition is slightly different from albinism, marked by full white cover and red eyes. The raven spotted in Midtown Anchorage this week has blue eyes, indicative of leucism, a lack of melanin pigments in some or all feathers.
“This is the only time I have ever heard of a white raven or seen pictures of a white raven,” said Riley Woodford, a public information officer with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, of this year’sA white raven vocalizes with other ravens on a rooftop in Midtown Anchorage on Tuesday. “A white raven is rarer than a black swan,” said Rick Sinnott, a former Anchorage-area wildlife biologist for the state, using a phrase that stands in for an extremely rare event.
Sinnott said ravens often move closer into towns and places where there’s more food or trash to scavenge as winter approaches, particularly in the month of October.
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