Iridescence

My husband found this lifeless hummingbird on the street in front of our house today. What a treat! We've always been curious about their brilliant feathers, but have never been able to see them for more than a moment and never close up. He brought it in for us to take a look at and the feathers are nothing short of magnificent. Another one of God's creations that you can't help but just stand in awe at.

Here's what it looks like from the side...




Here's what it looks like head on...



The color is just brilliant. We had to move it back and forth several times to believe our own eyes. I believe it's a male Anna's hummingbird since the iridescent coloring extends to its forehead. If you notice in the picture above, there is some threadlike material coming from its beak, maybe its beak got stuck because of it and it starved to death.

Now look at the body feathers, they look dark and dull from this angle...




From here, they are iridescent green.




So how does it work? Here's an explanation from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

Structural Colors

Adding to the diversity of avian colors are colors produced by the structure of the feather. The best known example is the gorget (throat feathers) of many hummingbird species. The iridescent colors of the gorget are the result of the refraction of incident light caused by the microscopic structure of the feathers. The refraction works like a prism, splitting the light into rich, component colors. At certain angles little or no light is reflected back to the viewer and the gorget can appear black. As the viewing angle changes, the refracted light becomes visible in a glowing, shimmering iridescent display.

It also says that during the dive display, he plummets in a near-vertical dive, which on sunny days, the dives are oriented so that the sun is reflected from the iridescent throat and crown directly at the object of the dive.