2025 - Purplebear's Photography

Leucistic American Robin photo

Here’s a Leucistic American Robin photo we took fairly recently. It’s possible you may have seen one of these birds, but it was a first for us at the time. I definitely am not a bird or genetics expert, but according to a variety of online sources, leucism describes defects in pigment cells caused during a bird’s development, which prevents pigments from reaching some or sometimes all of a bird’s feathers. The degree of leucism varies with a bird’s genetic makeup. The skin and eyes remain their normal pigment and color. You will see white splotches on its head or back.

We also have a photo of a Canadian goose that appears to be leucistic. We saw both of these at separate times while on our photo walks at a local wildlife refuge.

Red-shouldered Hawk photo

This is our most recent Red-shouldered Hawk photo. We walk two to three times a week at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge trying to get photos just like this. The funny thing is we took this photo right out our kitchen window. There’s a tree in our neighbor’s yard that hawks use constantly for surveying the area. Usually they are Cooper’s Hawks or Red-tailed Hawks. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a Red-shouldered Hawk in that tree, and we’ve lived here a long time.

Just in case you might be interested, we recently included this photograph in two of our newest calendars that we have for purchase. The wall calendar is located at our store in Zazzle. Our desk calendar is located in our store at Createphotocalendars. We also have a photograph of this same bird for sale at our Pictorem store.

Red-shouldered Hawk photo Read More »