We found a new bird today here near Arthur's Pass in the mountain beech forest. Unfortunately it was dead and dried up.
It is a South Island Yellow Breasted Tit but is totally white except the wings are a faint lemon colour. It has a tomtit beak and delicate tomtit legs.
We first saw this bird at a distance 3 weeks ago high in the tree tops when we thought it was a grey warbler but couldn't get a close look at it. The discovery today of this white bird dead on the side of a path solves the mystery but is not good for the bird. It shows no evidence of having been killed by a predator but may have just died of a complication associated with being albino.
With some difficulty I will try to photograph it and post on this Forum.
I Googled "albino SI Tomtit" and came up with the following other refrences to such a discovery:
Varieties. A very pretty albino specimen, received from Otago, has nearly the whole of the body white, with a wash of bright yellow on the head, breast, and abdomen; on the fore part of the breast there is a broad mark of velvety black, and on the upper surface there are a few scattered feathers of the same; some of the wing-feathers are pure white, the rest are black; the two middle tail-feathers are white, the outer ones black, obliquely crossed with a bar of white; bill and legs as in ordinary specimens.
Another albino, in the Otago Museum, has the general plumage white, with a faint tinge of brown on the page 43 head and of yellow on the body, there being a bright wash of canary-yellow on the breast. Wings and tail parti-coloured, several of the tail-feathers being entirely black; bill and feet white.