Community Corner

Video of a Rare Bird: Albino Robin is Making his Home in Strongsville

He's pure white and flying around Pine Lakes area

A rare albino robin has taken up residence in Strongsville.

The pure white bird has been seen hopping with his robin friends in the area of Webster and Albion roads, as well as flying through yards and chirping from trees.

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

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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 local website called seed-solutions.com documents albino robins in Ohio and cites information that says 8 percent of all albino birds are robins and that one in 30,000 robins is an albino -- although the vast majority of those are partial albinos.

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Greg Ordy, who runs the site, said it would be very uncommon to see a pure albino this early in the season because it means he would have survived the winter -- a difficult feat for an albino bird.

"The 100 percent pure albino has a very short lifespan because without the pigment in the eyes, the sun's UV rays will cause blindness, and a blind bird doesn't have much of a future," Ordy said in an e-mail. "If you see a pure albino at this time of year, that means that it must have survived over winter, since new chicks this year won't appear until around June."

The Strongsville "robin whitebreast" may be the rarest type -- a complete albino, because his beak and legs are also pale and his eyes appear reddish.

Another site, learner.org, offers photos of pure albino robins, which look very much like the Strongsville guy.

Searles said being an albino is not a good thing for a bird -- their light coloring makes them stand out and become more likely to fall victim to predators like red-tailed hawks and cats.

Ordy, who started collecting albino bird sightings a few years ago after posting pictures of a partial albino robin in his yard,  said he believes this area has a relatively high number of partial or pure albino birds.

"From the unscientific process of looking at the folks who have contacted me, I think it's fair to say that the Ohio/Michigan region is very well represented, and that pure albinos tend to crop up in the middle of the summer - probably as they are leaving the nest as juveniles," he wrote. "The early spring sightings tend to be in the south, and most always partial albinos. There very few examples in my limited sampling of 100 percent albinos being aroundright before the next crop of eggs hatch. I view that as some sort of confirmation that living past the first year is uncommon."


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