It’s moving so fast you can barely tell, but a woman in Cordova, a town in North-Central Alabama was able to capture footage of a rare albino hummingbird feeding in her backyard. The video was sent to local meteorologist James Spann by viewer Deborah Aldridge. Spann then shared the video online. In the short clip, you can see the white hummingbird as it zooms around the feeders along with a few other birds, grabbing sips here and there just like any other hummingbird.
According to The Audubon Society, white hummingbirds are either leucistic (a condition that causes a partial loss of pigmentation) or truly albino. Albino hummingbirds produce no melanin, which means their feathers have no color and their eyes are either red or pink. Birds with leucism produce melanin, but it does not make it into their feathers properly. Bird experts on Facebook have deemed the hummingbird in Deborah’s video a true albino, meaning it’s an extremely rare find.
Check out this magnificent creature for yourself:
Elsewhere in North America, a woman living in Ontario, Canada, was lucky enough to capture on video, not one, but two albino raccoons in late July. Jessica Fontaine was out walking her dog with her boyfriend when the three came across two light-colored animals on a home’s porch. At first, Fontaine thought they were looking at two white cats, but after noticing some regular colored raccoons mixed in the group, she realized that these were two “blonde” raccoons.
“They were pretty cute,” Fontaine told the Windsor Star. “They did see me. They looked at me. But then they just kind of went about their business.”
And in British Columbia, Canada, a photographer named Mike Yip managed to record footage of two rare white ravens earlier this summer. He shared his find with the Vancouver Sun, saying:
“We are getting one or two white ravens each year on and off for about 20 years.”
According to a local researcher, the inbreeding of local birds might account for the frequent sightings of more white ravens in the area.
Do you have any sightings of rare animals you would like to share? Let us know in the comments, and please be sure to share these splendid creatures with your friends and family.