Tuesday, January 16, 2018

A white black phoebe along the American River Parkway, Sacramento, California


I, Bob, have observed this black phoebe in white plumage for the last couple of months, but today I managed to get my closest and longest look at it.  Black phoebes are normally all black, except for a white belly, but this one is almost all white with a little bit of cream coloring.  Black phoebes are members of the flycatcher family and feed on flying insects by waiting on a perch and then darting out after an insect flying by.

This phoebe's territory seems to be around a drainage pump assemblage about a half mile upriver from the Watt Avenue Bridge along the American River's south side in Sacramento, California.

This photo was taken with a Canon EOS 6D Mark II full frame DSLR with a 100-400 mm zoom lens set on 400 and the resulting photo was heavily cropped to get this final result.

For comparison, I've posted below my heavily cropped photo from the same day of a normal black phoebe, also along the American River.

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3 comments:

  1. my friend has a picture of a similar bird by sacramento

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  2. Omg so cute! So rare! Nice catch. My favorite bird next to Towhees

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