PLUMAGE
I HAVE read both instalments of the article by Hein van Grouw with more than a passing interest. (See C&AB, June 12 and July 3.) Among other examples, he details the longterm whitening of a cock chaffinch and a blackbird, where both subjects grew progressively whiter with age.
For more than 70 years, apart from having kept albino and lutino budgerigars, I have also watched wild birds for any signs of partial or total aberrant whiteness.
In all those yearstwo seasons, he sired three clutches, but none of his offspring were white-marked birds. I had noted from the budgerigars that unless both parents were albino, or one was red-eyed and the other split for albino, there were no albino offspring, so the cock blackbird’s mate was normal.
