Midwest USA. December 2025.
Olympus E-M1+ Oly 75mm-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II @ 252, f/8, 1/80s, ISO-640.
Did I find an IRL shiny? Is this leucism? It's rare that I see a chickadee with white feathers in its cap.
You probably don’t but bird ranges are expanding rapidly. Also from what I’ve been told by some experts, mountain chickadees will sometimes join a BCC gang and hang out with it even without being near their range. So maybe you got a hybrid that just traveled very far east. In any case it looks just like a hybrid to me!