JAN EDWARDS WRITES: Jon, a friend sent this to me today. Any ideas what caused it? The original message read:
Jan, have you ever seen a bald blackbird . . . ? You have now. She looks perfectly healthy apart from the near perfect head shave. Any ideas? Obviously feeding a family so she's not sterile
i don't know if this is the same or not, but when i was a kid, we had a chicken that went bald from robbing out of a bird feeder we'd left up for the song birds (it used to flap and flutter it's way onto the bird table like a graceless version of that carling advert with the squirrel), it got it's head scraped up by the little hole on the feeder to the point where it stopped growing feathers there...
ReplyDeletethe other possibility that springs to mind is that if it's a female bird, it could just have an over-amorous partner. (again, no idea about blackbirds, but it's quite common in spring for female ducks to have no feathers on the back of their neck or their head)
if it doesn't seem to be a problem for the bird it's probably not worth worrying about!