These are birds which generally look black in their appearance, but in certain light can appear iridescent and multicolored. I always wondered why this was and had thought it might be a seasonal variation in plumage. It turns out that there's something else going on. There's a great Birdwatcher's Digest piece about why we consider some birds to be blue, despite the fact that there are no feathers anywhere in the world which are actually blue.
2 comments:
I've heard that about feathers.- Male Indigo Bunting look to be a brilliant indigo blue when the sun reflects off of them but I guess they're actually just black.-It's all some kind of illusion.
I've read, too, that the blue in opals and the blue of butterflies--both iridescences, I think--as well as the blue of the sky are not pigmented color. It makes you paranoid that all blue is an illusion. Then again, if you can see both of them and they're both purely visual, what's the difference between an illusion and a reality?
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