What the heck kind of bird is that?!

When Linda Couture was watching some birds feeding in her backyard on March 1, one of them caught her eye.

It was a strange white bird with a yellow beak that appeared to have been splattered with red paint.

"One of them, I have never seen before," she told Northern Life. "I have checked on the Internet and in my bird books, but couldn't find anything on this bird. He looks a lot like a grosbeak, but it has a yellow beak and his body does not have the same colour as a grosbeak ... it was kind of eye catching."

Couture reached out to Chris Blomme, a local ornithologist and Northern Life's bird columnist (you can find a new column from The Birdman every month. Here's his latest.

Originally, Couture thought it may have been some kind of crossed breed, but Blomme said her original assessment that the bird is a grosbeak was correct the one — with one slight difference.

"This is a really neat bird. It is a partial albino male pine grosbeak," Blomme wrote back in response to her query. "The term leucistic (leucism) is often applied. There was a leucistic Canada goose at Lilly Creek for a whole spring one year.

"This is fairly unusual and I have not seen one before in this species."

Blomme said Sudburians with birdfeeders can keep their eyes open for unusual conditions like this. Leucism is a possible condition "in any of the finches such as the common redpolls, pine siskins, American goldfinch and purple finch."

"The real trick comes if you get a true albino with no colour reference to identify the bird in the field," he added.

Got a photo of any other unusual animals? Northern Life would love to see them. Send your photos to [email protected].