Lazuli Bunting Malibu Creek State Park Southern California 270-270
"T. S. Eliot once used the phrase “ Water out of sunlight” when referring to the refractive blue color in a pool. I have no way of knowing this, but I suspect he never watched a little azure jewel drop out of the sky and land on a shrub in the American West, or he may have adjusted his metaphor to claim that Lazuli Buntings are feathered beings made of sunlight. And he would have been more scientifically accurate had he done so. In birds, and also in glacial lakes, the color blue is indeed made out of sunlight, prismatically refracted (bent) light from the barbules of the barbs of the vane in a feather. In the Lazuli Bunting male, the color is almost neon – named after the lapis lazuli precious stone. The stone is pretty, but the bird is stunning, and the stone should probably have been named after the bird, instead of the other way around." by Denny Olson
flatheadaudubon.org
Lazuli Bunting Malibu Creek State Park Southern California 270-270
"T. S. Eliot once used the phrase “ Water out of sunlight” when referring to the refractive blue color in a pool. I have no way of knowing this, but I suspect he never watched a little azure jewel drop out of the sky and land on a shrub in the American West, or he may have adjusted his metaphor to claim that Lazuli Buntings are feathered beings made of sunlight. And he would have been more scientifically accurate had he done so. In birds, and also in glacial lakes, the color blue is indeed made out of sunlight, prismatically refracted (bent) light from the barbules of the barbs of the vane in a feather. In the Lazuli Bunting male, the color is almost neon – named after the lapis lazuli precious stone. The stone is pretty, but the bird is stunning, and the stone should probably have been named after the bird, instead of the other way around." by Denny Olson
flatheadaudubon.org