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Thursday, June 22, 2023

Glossy

 
Nesting Pelagic Cormorant (Urile pelagicus), 21 June 2023
 
The smallest of the local cormorant species. From a distance they look black, but in the right light, their feathers look glossy green, purple, and bronze.  Also note the red near the base of the bill.

2 comments:

Dan Gurney said...

I wonder whether cormorants appear way more colorful to each other than they do to us. Aren't birds able to perceive colors outside, and beyond, the range of human eyesight?

Jackie Sones said...

Hi, Dan!

I'm not sure about cormorant vision, but they certainly appear to respond to visual cues. And I've read (very briefly) that colors in bird plumages tend to be aligned with what they can see.

:) Jackie