Photo by Laura Packer/Special to the Reporter-News A rare white hummingbird stops to feed at an Abilene home recently.

Photo by Laura Packer

Photo by Laura Packer/Special to the Reporter-News

Charles and Gala Corley enjoy watching beautiful birds at their home near Rose Park.

But about two weeks ago the retired Abilene couple began seeing their most unusual winged visitor yet -- a rare white hummingbird.

The bird is not an albino -- even rarer -- but is considered leucistic (pronounced "lew-kisstick"). It has pigment in its feathers and dark eyes.

"If it were an albino, the iris would be red," said Laura Packer, president of the Big Country Audubon Society and one of several bird lovers who have flocked to the Corleys' home in the Arbors at Rose Park retirement community hoping to catch a glimpse of the unusual bird.

Packer believes the bird is a female black-chinned hummingbird.

Most of the white hummingbirds reported have been female, and based on the bird's long, curved bill and curved feathers, black-chinned is the right label, confirmed Bill Hilton Jr., a science educator and nature writer with the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in York, S.C.

"This is a rare treat," he said.

He said white hummingbird sightings are not as rare as they used to be, partly because people are becoming more observant and more savvy about reporting their findings. He said he's received about 20 reports of white hummingbirds this summer.

He noted that of the few white hummingbirds who have been caught, tagged and released back into the wild, there have been no confirmed cases of any coming back. Hilton believes they probably perished because they were easy targets for prey because of their color, or they have had other problems besides their white feathers.

"It's obviously an aberration," he said.

Packer said bird watchers have recorded seven kinds of hummingbirds in the Abilene area, with ruby-throated, black-chinned and rufous being the most common.

The white bird spotted in Abilene has a black spot on its wing. Hilton said that's where there are no feathers and the black spot is the color of the skin. On a normal black-chinned hummingbird, whose feathers are black, iridescent green and purple, the bald spot would not be noticeable.

Is it possible if one white bird is spotted, then more are nearby?

Hilton said it is possible that if the bird's parents mated with each other again, they could produce another white bird. He doesn't know for sure, and he said it's difficult to determine hummingbird parentage.

The Corleys' bird was making a daily pilgrimage to their feeders on their front porch until recently.

"The white bird would sometimes sit in a tree looking at the feeder," Gala Corley said. "Then it would come and sip the sugary water."

The retired medical missionaries to Zimbabwe soon had neighbors and members of the Audubon Society all aflutter about the bird, and they came to get a glimpse. One photographer camouflaged himself like the shrubbery to try to get a picture.

Hummingbirds flutter to the feeder, drink and fly away at 60 miles per hour.

Packer said she will put on her walking shoes, wear camouflaged clothes and take her camera anywhere for a picture.

"You have to think like a bird," Packer said.

She and two members of the Audubon Society sat in nearly 100-degree weather in a hot pickup for hours to catch a glimpse of the rare bird and photograph it.

"This is the first one that I have seen," she said.

Gala Corley said the hummingbird had not been seen since early this week.

"I don't know if it will come back," she said.

Packer said the hummingbird might have decided to migrate. Males migrate first, then the females.

"They gather along the coast," she said. "The birds stay for two to four weeks to get ready for the flight across the Gulf of Mexico."

Packer said it is a 500-mile, nonstop 18-hour flight and only the strong birds make it.

The Corleys still have their coffee on the porch in the mornings, watching hummingbirds and hoping the white bird will return.