I’m going to have a photo published.

I took a shot of a white breasted nuthatch in the spring, with an abnormally long beak.

After doing some searching on the web, I found that this is called Avian Keratin Disorder and believed to be caused by a virus. See the link.

Avian Keratin Disorder


The USGS in Alaska has a long running study and a web page for posting sightings so I though why not, and posted a photo in may, and then heard nothing back……….until this week.

They are going to print my photo in an upcoming publication with revised ranges and species impacted.

Interesting and Congrats!!!

Congrats Lowell - that's certainly a long bill - you wonder if it affected the way it could feed, getting into the tree bark crevices.

Thanks,

I have a shot if it with a sun flour seed, seemed to have it ok, but some birds with the disorder have deformed and twisted bills, I don’t think they can survive

Congratulations. That is awesome.

Interesting. Did they say which technical periodical it will be published in?

I have recently seen photos of birds with those kinds of deformities, but I didn't know it was thought to be caused by a novel virus.

Wonderful photograph and congratulations. I'm guessing it's not a virus but rather man's intervention of GMO seeds and chemicals....but what do I know.

Hi Pete, I haven’t seen you post much recently.

They didn’t give a publication date, but I will watch out and when i see it I will put a link in the thread.


I had a couple of robins last year that had a large number of white feathers, not really albino, but I forget now the exact name for it.. I contacted eBird about it because there was no place to report unusual sightings,

It got me thinking about how many places there might be for reporting unique sightings, like the link I posted where someone is actually using the information.

Nuthatches are in my friends region so he will be forwarded this message regarding beak abnormality .

The Ontario Field Ornithologists publication "Ontario Birds" has had a number of articles about aberrant plumage (not so much beaks as I recall) - if you are interested see the April 2020, April 2021 and August 2021 editions.

http://www.ofo.ca/library/serve/ob-39-2/index.html?page=1

Just came across an article on NPR discussing the increased beak sizes in birds relating to climate change, so the upshot is that a recent study examined beak lengths (as well as tails and legs) with rising temperatures, beaks are a way of dissipating body heat.

Link to the study the article references:
https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(21)00197-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS016953472100197X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Or maybe the bird just told a fib?

As a follow up, see the attached link

Avian Keratin Disorder virtual presentation

"Leucistic" is the term for partial lack of pigmentation. I took photos of an American robin with mostly white feathers in the Collingwood area a few years ago. It was so strange looking, I wasn't sure what I was chasing at the time.

Leucism - Wikipedia

Another possibility is "partial greying", in which, like humans normally pigmented feathers are replaced with white ones as the bird ages. The placement of these white feathers is asymmetrical, whereas in leucism it is symmetrical, i.e., a white feather on one side of the body is matched by one in the same position on the other side of the body.