Have you ever seen a White Raven?

So this is how the story goes…we were sitting on the tailgate of our Avalanche, my spouse and I, in Tim Horton’s parking lot in Thunder Bay, drinking our extra-large coffees, conversing with a dude who just happened to taking his dog for an early morning walk, when I spotted it.

It had landed across the street on a wire, and at first I thought it was a really big pigeon with a deformed beak or something. Then I heard it…”Caw, caw, caw”. I screwed up my eyes, squinting at this really odd looking bird, thinking that maybe it was just the way the sun was shining on it, making it appear lighter in color. Then it flew.

It landed on somebody’s lawn across the street, the sun was no longer directly hitting it - and I realized that it was true. This was no ordinary, run of the mill, raven. No, this one was special. It was white, not albino, just white, with a black beak and some dark color on it’s wing tips. Wow, how cool is that?

I ran to the passenger side of the truck and whipped out my handy-dandy, Fujifilm, Finepix, digital camera and proceeded to take some photos.

white raven

My boyfriend, watching me stand on the edge of the curb, perching precariously on the edge of that dangerous River street, morning traffic, decided to risk life and limb to cross the busy street and get a few better shots of the odd coloured bird just for me (awww).

white raven

white raven

I have since found out that there are two of these genetic freaks of nature in Thunder Bay area, and that ravens in other parts of the world often come in different colours. There are even albino ravens with the pink eyes and white beaks - pretty birds actually, (I just Googled the term white raven and found a couple of interesting photos) but that is the first time in my life that I saw anything like that and many folks that I spoke with about it had never seen such a site either. So I decided to share with you - it isn’t every day you get to see something like this you know, enjoy.