H is for Hue – The Secret Miracle of Birds
Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) by Ralph Arvesen, Flikr.
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The secret universe of birds is extraordinary – and completely unavailable to us. Their vision has more acuity – they can see far finer grades of every colour than we can. A lemon-yellow petal to them may be a myriad of lemon-ness we will never experience.
Colour is parts of light. Our eyes contain three cones that perceive red, blue and green light. From those colours and mixes of them, we see all the many colours available to us (but not in as much detail as a bird would) from that part of the spectrum, our visible spectrum.
But birds have a fourth cone, and that cone is sensitive to ultraviolet light, or UV. They see all colours available to us plus the finer grades of those, plus uv colours plus all those red, green, blue hues mixed with uv colours – colours that we cannot even guess at.
Even when we look at petals and feathers and things which we know look different under uv light – we can only see that they are different, like looking at red and yellow in black and white, we see one is darker, one is lighter, but we cannot see the colour. Because we have no cone we cannot see UV, but also, our brain would not be able to decode the colours we were seeing.
What sort of a world do birds inhabit? A very different one to us.
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Photo © Ralph Arvesen.
Poem © Liz Brownlee.
Information from the book Bird Colouration by Geoffrey E. Hill, pub. National Geographic April 2010.
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- Posted in: A-Z Challenge 2014
- Tagged: animals, bird, colour, education, inspiration, miracle, nature, photograph, poem, poetry, science, wildlife
lizbrownlee - poet 
Great post, thanks for sharing!
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Thanks, Rocco.
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Bird is your song of color trails?
Exquisite. Thank you. Visiting from A to Z Challenge (http://lovedasif.com/)
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Thank you! Off to see yours now, it’s always good to be left a link!
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I spend a lot of time watching birds in my garden but there is nothing as colourful as the painted bunting.
Good to see Lola too.
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Wow, I would love to have birds as beautiful as this in my garden! Mind you, we have goldfinches, and they are pretty gorgeous!
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What can I say Liz? Beautiful, and that’s a perfect picture for the poem x
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Lovely delicate poem, and as always I learn something from your words.
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Thank you, Liz!
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Nicely done! I love the image, too!
A to Z: writingforpeanuts.com
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Thanks, Deborah! It is a wonderful image, after the A-Z I am going to look up more macro photography!
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Perfect picture for hue and for the colorful poem. It is always amazing to think about the senses of animals and how much more acute many of them are than ours. “a secret universe of hue” Lovely.
Donna Smith
The A-to-Z Challenge
Mainely Write
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Thank you Donna! Will come and see you tomorrow – today I have been agonised by the poem after next and haven’t done anything, not even the washing up!
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Thank you for your message, and yes I am following. blessings to you!, and Thank you SO much and greetings… 🙂
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Thank you, Gede!
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