Rare all-white robin spotted in Winnipeg backyard 'an oddball for sure'
What hops like a robin, eats like a robin but doesn't exactly look like a robin?
A Winnipegger and amateur birder came across a real-life shiny Pokémon this week when he spotted a rare all-white robin hopping around his backyard.
"It's pure white from head to toe, belly and everything," Ryan Bullock told CBC.
"It's an oddball for sure in the yard."
Bullock said he first noticed a group of robins outside his home when he looked out his window on Tuesday.
"What first caught my attention was that there was an actual robin in the yard, and I thought, 'It's late in the season for them.' And that's when I noticed the white robin foraging and sort of searching for worms," he said.
"The way it hops around, the way it feeds it sort of, you know, pecks at the ground and then turns its head to the side — all of these things are kind of consistent with what I observed … in the robins that it was hanging out with."
But this isn't the first time Bullock caught sight of the creature.
He noticed a white-feathered robin when he was driving near Dunkirk Drive and St. Vital Road in Winnipeg last spring.
"[I] tried to identify it and realized it wasn't in any bird book that I had," he said.
Winnipegger Ryan Bullock spotted this white robin in his backyard on Tuesday. (Submitted by Ryan Bullock)
Spotting a white robin is "pretty darn rare" in Manitoba, but not the rarest sighting, Oak Hammock Marsh naturalist Paula Grieef said.
The bird Bullock saw had black eyes, not the pink eyes that are seen in truly albino animals. Grieef said the "partial albino" robin Bullock saw are seen a little bit more often.
"You hear about albinos being seen of different species … maybe once, twice a year," she said on CBC's Information Radio on Wednesday.
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The unusual colour of the bird's feathers is created by an abnormality in its genetic code that means it doesn't produce the pigment that darkens them, said Grieef.
While the bird otherwise looks like a robin, it might not always act the exact same as one.
"It will probably have a few behavioural differences because they really stand out … not only to us but also to predators," said Grieef.
"So they need to be a little bit more secretive because they don't live necessarily as long as your normal-coloured robin."
The bird also might have to work a little harder to find a mate since "they're not quite right, according to all the other robins," Grieef added.
But she said if you stumble upon the animal, it's best to treat them like any other member of the species.
"I always say, 'enjoy nature.' If you feed birds, continue feeding birds," she said.
This article was originally published for CBC News on Nov 08, 2023. With files from Marcy Markusa.
