{"id":278158,"date":"2025-11-11T18:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T18:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/278158\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T18:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T18:13:09","slug":"white-tui-sighting-in-bay-of-plenty-garden-thrills-locals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/278158\/","title":{"rendered":"White t\u016b\u012b sighting in Bay of Plenty garden thrills locals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI saw it one day flying around and in our avocado tree. Then it started becoming a daily thing. It would come to our house, in our trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely had to have a close-up double-take, but as soon we saw the tufts of feathers, we knew [it was a t\u016b\u012b] and the beak also was a giveaway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pye said he tried to get some decent photos of the bird, but anytime he got close, it would \u201cgap it\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI got up for the rugby the other morning and looked out the window after the game, and it was in the k\u014dwhai tree. <\/p>\n

\u201cI quickly shot out and got some photos, and throughout the day got a couple more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pye said it was an amazing sight. <\/p>\n

\" This rarely-sighted white t\u016b\u012b, and friend, have been frequent visitors to Nathan Pye’s Bay of Plenty garden recently. Photo \/ Nathan Pye<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really cool seeing it. It\u2019s so white and so different than the other birds flying around.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the white t\u016b\u012b had also made a mate in the neighbourhood \u2013 a more common blue, black and green t\u016b\u012b.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey fly around together.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pye said someone in the area had commented on social media that a white t\u016b\u012b had been seen around their property a couple of years ago. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely doesn\u2019t look like a young bird.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pye said he felt lucky to see the rare bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get kerur\u016b and weka, all of them around here. There\u2019s a reason our k\u014dwhai tree has no leaves on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\" The rarely-sighted white t\u016b\u012b’s colour is likely the result of genetic mutation and it does not have the pink eyes of an albino, Dr Colin Miskelly of Te Papa says. Photo \/ Nathan Pye<\/p>\n

Te Papa curator of vertebrates Dr Colin Miskelly said white t\u016b\u012b likely arose through genetic mutation.<\/p>\n

He said this particular white t\u016b\u012b was leucistic, which referred to the look of the bird without identifying how it came to be white.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost white t\u016b\u012b are not albinos,\u201d Miskelly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do not have pink eyes, and typically have slightly grey or brown feathers, rather than the pure white of an albino.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was likely that most leucistic birds had a heritable genetic condition, but it may be caused by non-heritable environmental effects, including ontogenetic (occurring during development), diet-related or an interaction of genetics, ontogeny and environment.<\/p>\n

Miskelly said he heard of two or three white t\u016b\u012b sightings a year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI saw it one day flying around and in our avocado tree. Then it started becoming a daily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,9826,17702,13960,3612,191,4717,161307,161302,36440,161303,1787,46677,161304,161306,128,1113,161305,11414,95888,155131,14802,13886,338],"class_list":["post-278158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bay","tag-birds","tag-garden","tag-haven","tag-home","tag-in","tag-itself","tag-locals","tag-made","tag-nathan","tag-of","tag-plenty","tag-pyes","tag-recently","tag-science","tag-sighting","tag-sorts","tag-t","tag-thrills","tag-unusual","tag-visitor","tag-white","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}