Finally got to make a return visit to the first owl rehab I visited. The Raptor Trust is a nice medical and rehab facility in northern NJ.
It’s a great facility to look around, but picture taking is absolutely terrible. They have very fine netting on all the enclosures. Most of my pics look like this, no matter how hard I tried.
I’ll share a few I got where you can actually see the birds. The post picture is of the most beautiful Barred Owl they had, Sonny.
Again, very sad to not be able to get a good pic of this one. This is a leukistic Robin! Super excited to see this.
I saw people walking by and pointed it out to them. Everyone thought the pen was empty as it was so hard to see it as it was so bright out it was hard to notice it. They acted like I was trying to prank them into looking for an animal in an empty pen, but then they found it and were excited too.
Leucistic birds are very interesting. There was a leucistic goldfinch on my feeder a few years ago. They are just kind of washed out looking.
I’ve read the leucism develops when the nerves and sense organ are developing as well, so they typically have bad eyesight and other nerve problems, so they typically do not fare well.
You’re here pretty often, so you probably saw the big post about the leucistic GHO I shared a while back, but if not, I can find you a link.