Jason E. Andersen

Bonus Fun Fact: The feathers of blue birds aren’t blue, not really anyway. It’s actually the illusion of blue! The majority of bird feathers are colored the way they are because of pigmentation. Red, black, white, orange — all those colors are made through pigmentation. The bird eats food, absorbs nutrients, and grows feathers that reflect the nutrients they absorbed, based on their genetics. Cardinals are red, but some are more red than others, because they ate more of the nutrients that make their feathers red (they’re called carotenoids).

Blue is different. Birds can’t create blue through pigments like other colors. Feathers that appear blue are really a clearish grey color that is quite drab. It’s the structure of the feather that gives off the blue color. Light passes through the feather and, through the physics magic of refraction, the blue color is what we see.

Which begs the question, what does it mean to see color anyway? What is red? What is blue? I’ll let you think about that next time you see colorful birds flying by.