Are you sure the blue-eyed pileated isn’t a juvenile of the year? Female
bushtits hatch with dark brown eyes and the iris changes to cream or yellow
very slowly. It passes through a gray-blue stage that looks very much like
the iris in the picture.
Just a thought.
Sarah
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Dr Sarah A. Sloane
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biology
Division of Natural Sciences
University of Maine at Farmington
Farmington, Maine 04938
sloane@xxxxxxxxx
207-778-7484 (office)
207-500-3733 (cell)
https://bushtitsrule.blogspot.com
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On Jun 19, 2020, at 2:35 PM, Gerald Meenaghan (Redacted sender "meenaghang"
for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Oregon / Lane Birders,
This morning, John Sullivan and I had a really nice experience with a pair of
pileated woodpeckers at Wayne Morse Ranch in Eugene. Upon my return home, I
processed my pictures to find that the male (redhead) has blue irises. At
first, I just thought it was cool-looking, but after a cursory Google image
search, I’m finding it’s quite rare. Another cursory search on eBird’s
Macaulay Library indicates that it’s perhaps ~1/100, making it about as
common as red hair in humans. Yellow irises are the norm, with dark (orange,
brown) irises being the next most common. Does anyone have any leads on the
prevalence of this blue iris recessive gene expression in pileated
woodpeckers? Basically, how rare exactly are blue irises on a pileated
woodpecker?
I’ve attached one small example picture here. More can be found here:
https://ebird.org/checklist/S70601778 ;<https://ebird.org/checklist/S70601778>
With thanks in advance,
Gerry Meenaghan
meenaghang@xxxxxx <mailto:meenaghang@xxxxxx>
541-221-4307
<Blue-eyed redhead7.jpg>
