Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I have no clue, but it may be the same structuring within the skin somehow. Supposedly the color comes from melanin from articles that I have found, but melanin tends to be brown in color.
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A Bug for Dan
- Thread starter John53
- Start date
To confuse matters more, in immature blue-faced honeyeaters the (not) blue is green.
The bird is being very tricky. The black parts are black. But white parts are white, but the blue parts are that color by just reflecting blue light by using very precise gaps in strands of its feathers and not by using pigments.
Worse than that, they do not fool just humans:
How Birds Make Colorful Feathers | Bird Academy • The Cornell Lab
As one might expect from the amazing diversity of colors and patterns exhibited by more than 10,000 bird species found in the world, birds can see color. The colors in the feathers of a bird are formed in two different ways, from either pigments or from light refraction caused by the structure o ...academy.allaboutbirds.org
Amazing that it's pockets of air that cause the illusion of blue. I'd be interested in finding out if birds with blue all evolved from a common ancestor or if it has evolved more than once.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Since both butterflies and birds evolved to use the same trick, but did so independently of each other I could see birds evolving it more than once.
Here's another quandary. The males of the various fairywren species that have blue only have the blue in breeding season. Then they moult into a dull brown and resemble the females until next breeding season.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
How blue are they? I hope you don't have naked birds running around.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I answered my own question. It varies I see. The Superb Fairywren is not as blue as the Splendid. But it really uses what it has well:
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Oops! Let's not forget the Splendid. He already looks a bit irate:
We have superb and variegated where I live.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Where I live the bluest bird is Steller's Jay. They look even more blue than a Blue Jay. But the blue jay is an east coast bird so they got named first:
Where I live the bluest bird is Steller's Jay. They look even more blue than a Blue Jay. But the blue jay is an east coast bird so they got named first:
And over this side of the Atlantic puddle we have the Blue Tit.
More green than blue but blue sounds better
Why is it cross?
I don't have an answer for this either. Maybe they just aren't ripe yet.
The paparazzi
That is a very cool photo.
I can understand that. They are always trying to catch me with some sexy celebrity. Rumor has it there are still photos of me and Kylie Minogue out there.
I like how you captured the web in this picture. Even the finer strands.