What is most important when looking at and watching birds? The easy answer is to carefully look at the entire bird. You will ...

To find food, dazzle mates, escape predators and navigate diverse terrain, birds rely on their excellent color vision. “Humans are color-blind compared to birds and many other animals,” said Mary ...

While humans have three color cones in the retina sensitive to red, green and blue light, birds have a fourth color cone that can detect ultraviolet light. A research team trained wild ...

Color systems date back centuries, at least to Richard Waller’s 1686 Tabula colorum physiologica. Yet bird-watching hones a sharp eye for color differentiation, so Ridgway had an edge — as ...

Metaphorically, if the birds were artists, they would use carotenoids as a broad brush to produce color patches, with melanins as a detail paint brush to produce more intricate designs.