Leucistic Crows

Carrion Crow (Corvus corone)

For the last couple of years, I have seen a crow on a beach just outside Kinghorn, that had a couple of white wing-feathers. I didn't see it today but I assume it was a parent of these three youngsters being fed by a normally-coloured adult.

Presumably, this adult (bottom left) carries a recessive gene (or genes) for leucism and is paired with the unphotographed known leucistic adult. They have three healthy youngsters that all have white feathers to varying degrees (top left).

The one with the most white (top right) shows much more white when the wings are spread as it begs for food (bottom right).

My apologies for posting a collage of 4 images but 
a) it was the best way to present this story, and 
b) no individual image was good enough to stand alone as a blip because the birds were rather distant and I had the camera on digital zoom on top of full optical zoom and then the result has been cropped.