Question about colors thru bins? (1 Viewer)

Hi

I was out looking at birds near a lake yesterday, with my ZR ED 8x43's.

I came accross a green-backed heron on the shore and in somewhat dim light.

The supercillum on this bird looked to be almost flourescent green in color and it appeared to have purplish/burgundy sides.

I did not get a picture, but in looking at some online, it seems common that the supercillum is really yellow and the sides are brownish.

So, my question is...

Are the color differences due to the lighting or would a better set of bins have resolved this better?

Or could this bird's colors be that off?

In bright light, the reds, browns, etc. of other birds were quite accurate.

As I stated above, the lighting on this bird was less than ideal, but I managed to sneek up to within 25 feet of it.

Just curious

Thanks

Richard

rjwims said:

The supercillum on this bird looked to be almost flourescent green in color and it appeared to have purplish/burgundy sides.

Click to expand...

Were you possibly wearing polarized sun-glasses? If so, next time you experience a color oddity, tilt your head 45 degrees and see if the colors change. I sometimes get an electric blue off brightly-lit foliage with my Swaros.

I was doing some waterfowl watching the other day in dim light on a really cloudy day. When you get a flat gray day which tends to reflect flat gray off of the water, colors can do some weird things. In my instance, it was almost like the birds had turned into black, gray, and white silhouettes. Mallards and Northern Shoveler had black heads, and Green Wing Teal had pretty invisible green cheek patches, and Cinnamon Teal were simply little black ducks. Pintails and Bald Eagles were the only things that showed up real well.

The ZEN ED showed the best color of anything I had with me, and showed colors as well as anything that the members of a birding tour group that stopped at the same vantage point as I did. There was a Swaro 8.5 EL that was no better than the ZEN ED and a Zeiss FL that was perhaps a bit better. So sometimes, bad light can pretty well trump even really top optics.

Polarized sunglasses?

Ya, the birds all looked red and then when I changed to a different pair, they all looked blue..and then green... :-O

Just kidding, no sunglasses...

Birds on the water and with the sun shining, showed the true colors.

For example, the red on the font of a Moorhen was absolutely spectacular, rich in color, etc.

The Green heron was also spectacular, except that it was not in the sun and the colors were off.

Is it possible that this birds colors were that different, or just a light issue?

Thanks

Richard

Feathers produce weird color effects. Such as in hummingbirds. So it does depend on the light.

Thanks guys....it's a learning process

Slow but kind of sure.

Richard

rjwims said:

Birds on the water and with the sun shining, showed the true colors.
For example, the red on the font of a Moorhen was absolutely spectacular, rich in color, etc.
The Green heron was also spectacular, except that it was not in the sun and the colors were off.
Is it possible that this birds colors were that different, or just a light issue?

Click to expand...

If you were looking back and forth between sun and shade, the effect may have been a product of differences in the color temperatures of the light and your brain's "white balance" efforts. The color of the light on birds in the shade is different from birds in the sun. Given enough time, our brain "corrects" for these differences to a great extent, but when switching from mostly sun to brief glances at objects in the shade the correction for full sun will make the differences in perceived color of objects in the shade even more extreme.

--AP

Hey Alexis

Thanks for the response.

Actually, I was looking at all the birds on and around the water and in the sun for quite a while, until the green-back flew in.

Then I began to concentrate on this bird for 20 minutes or more, in that the bright green supercilium and purplish sides was something totally new to me.

So even after a fair bit of time, it was still greenish and purple.

When I got home, I began to look through my guide in an effort to identify the bird without much luck...then I posted a decrisption of what I saw in the bird ID section, and someone came back with the answer.

I did a bit of research and found some with yellow, but not the greenish that I saw.

So, as said by others, it was probably just the lighting and/or background or whatever that caused my eyes to see the green as opposed to yellow.

Being somewhat new to all this, I was confused as to whether a green-backed heron could possibly have greenish as opposed to yellow supercilium.

No biggie, the colors thru my ZENS were very sharp and clear.

On a side note: My eyes could be totally fubar (old fart syndrome) :-O

Thanks again everyone

Richard

Not actually wanting to introduce bird ID into an optics subforum but ...

You say it was a "green backed heron" which is no longer a species (it's been split) so the most likely close match in the US is the Green Heron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green-backed_Heron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Heron
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Green_Heron.html

But ... are you sure it was a Green Heron? From your ID it sounds like you've not seen one before and without your guide you didn't focus on the main field marks for GH. Like the short yellow legs. The dark, rotund GIS. White throat stripe (though see below).

NatGeo4: "Back and sides are deep chestnut; green upper parts is mixed with blue-gray. Center of throat white. [...] Juvenile is browner above; white throat and underparts streaked with brown."

That doesn't sound like your description (but your description is only partial).

The Green Heron photo at wikipedia is very nice and shows these colors very well.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Butorides_virescens_at_Tarpon_Springs.jpg

Did you get any of the other field marks for a Green Heron? Short legs? Central white throat stripe? Smallish size? Dumpy?

I don't see a yellow or green supercillium in any of the drawings or photos I've looked at but there is a yellow loral flesh patch but it is not as a field mark for the species.

The other Heron that comes to mind is the Tricolored Heron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricolored_heron
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Tricolored_Heron.html

In range for you in Miami. As the Smithsonian guide puts it "shades of blue, purple and gold variable" and "string age-related and seasonal differences" (in plumage). The photo shows it rather well. Yellow lores too. Peterson 5 also points out "Immature neck rusty brown". So perhaps you caught one moulting to adult colors (they're complex basic molt: an immature for the first year then molt to adult in the second year then molt once a year). It's also a lot less dumpy than the Green Heron: bigger with a longer bill and long neck.

Non-breeding adult (right for this time of year).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adult_Tricolored_Heron.jpg

Then again:

The supercillum on this bird looked to be almost flourescent green in color and it appeared to have purplish/burgundy sides.

Click to expand...

Burgendy is only a small step from chestnut in the right light and with a blue-gren glossy that some feathers of the GH have I could perhaps see this in the right light. What was the light? Was the sky overcast or blue? That latter would skew shadows to blue perhaps skewing you color perception?

BTW, I find the Zen ED does show colors very well. I recently saw a Chestnut-backed Chickadee here and I'd rather though I'd been missing them because I wasn't looking carefully enough. But this one popped up and the chestnut brown back was really chestnut brown. No mistaking them. And this was on a overcast day sparse woodland.

Could be a trick of the light but I would look at your ID first.

OK ... back to optics

Hey kevin

The wiki link that you posted is the same that I used to ID the bird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Heron

Definitely the same bird , unless there are others that ressemble it.

Perhaps my terminology is wrong, but isn't the area around the eye called the supercilium? In any case. as per the wiki pic, my bird had the same coloring around the eye, but it looked green. The chestnut area was larger and seemed a bit more purplish.

The legs were the same and quite yellow.

I am convinced that the lighting caused me to see the colors differently..and no problem with my ZENS, maybe some with my eyes and brain tho....:-O

Thanks

Richard

rjwims said:

Hey kevin

The wiki link that you posted is the same that I used to ID the bird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Heron

Definitely the same bird , unless there are others that ressemble it.

Perhaps my terminology is wrong, but isn't the area around the eye called the supercilium? In any case. as per the wiki pic, my bird had the same coloring around the eye, but it looked green. The chestnut area was larger and seemed a bit more purplish.

The legs were the same and quite yellow.

I am convinced that the lighting caused me to see the colors differently..and no problem with my ZENS, maybe some with my eyes and brain tho....:-O

Thanks

Richard

Click to expand...

Interesting.

Only the area immediately above the eye is the supercillium (from the Latin "above the eye"!). The part in front of the eye are the lores. They eye may also divide the eye strip Some people also make a distinction for some species with an eye strip into two parts (pre and post ocular stripe). The forward part of the supercillium is sometimes called the supraloral, usually when it's a different color and there isn't a "full" supercillium. As you can see each part has a specific name and you can easily confuse folks when you use the wrong one

The NatGeo Birding Essentials is the most comprehensive over view of bird topography (plenty of photographic examples) and Sidley's Birding Basics has good coverage of bird topograpy and it's nomenclature. Both include non-passerines ... which a lot of books ignore.

When someone says supercillium I think eyebrow stripe like a Bewick's or Carolina Wren

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bewick's_Wren
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Wren

Hmmm, not even a mention of optics this time (and people wonder if we optics nuts bird!).

3 weeks ago, if someone said supercillium, I would have said

" No thanks, I'm trying to cut back"...:-O

It seems to me there are quite a few birds that will pull this dastardly trick on you. I was watching some kind of teal on a lake in grey light this weekend, and the color spot would go from green, through blue-green, blue, all the way to deep violet and finally dark and colorless, depending on the angle.

Without seeming too supercilious, I hope, I should say that my binocular, being of a brand considered well established in its reputation, frankly snooty, I immediately blamed the blamed bird! A few more terrific reviews, however, and all doubt concerning the ZRED will vanish like a mist, and you can be like me. Except maybe, good at birding, which I totally suck at.
Ron