Has Anyone Seen the Albino Robin This Year?

Last year, Strongsville was home to .

The mostly white bird made its home on Webster Road in the area of Albion Road.

First thought to be pure white, it appears the bird is only a partial albino because of a black tail feather and some color in its beak.

"It's pretty rare," Stan Searles, curator of birds and aquatics for the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, told Strongsville Patch last April. "I have bird feeders in my back yard, and I've never seen one."

Wikipedia says albinism in birds is rare, and says most specimens are partial albinos, with white feathers in place of colored ones on portions of their bodies.

One resident of the Webster Road area, Scot Hetzel, of a robin he found just after it hatched and raised to adulthood.

When he researched how to care for the newborn robin, which he named Scruffles, he learned that the offspring of hand-raised birds often have genetic differences.

He released Scruffles near his home and said she made her nest in his yard.