Today we captured a female kestrel (Falco sparverius) that had very abnormal plumage. She had such an odd look to her that we immediately thought of a photographic negative, so dubbed her the "negative kestrel".

In many areas, especially on her wing coverts, where the feathers were supposed to be dark in color - they were light instead. Her head had very faded bluish color around the rufous cap but was much less extensive than the blue of a normal female kestrel. The negative kestrel had about a 1.5 cm wide white band about 3 cm from the end of the tail that extended horizontally through all of her tail feathers. This bird's feathers showed much more wear than expected, as compared to a normal bird. However, she was normal or nearly normal in some regards: she had rufous spots in the usual locations such as on her primaries and secondaries, she had black malar stripes and the subterminal band on the tail was a (faded appearing) black.

We were wondering if this could be a leucistic bird? Please note that in no way was this bird an albino (dark eyes). If anyone has any information on this type of abnormal plumage, please email us privately at jmorrow@trib.com. Based on the stress marks on her tail that continued horizontally across the feathers, we determined that she had hatched this past year.