True Colors: How Birds See the World Thanks to UV vision, birds
see the world very differently than we do IN THE EARLY 1970s, A
RESEARCHER testing the ability of pigeons to discriminate colors
discovered by accident that the birds can see ultraviolet (UV)
light. The finding was deemed curious but not too important. “It
was natural for scientists to assume that bird vision is like
human vision,” says Geoffrey Hill, an Auburn University
ornithologist and the author of Bird Coloration. “After all,
birds and humans are both active by day, we use bright colors as
cues. ... No one really imagined birds might see the world
differently.” But during the following decades, systematic
testing of bird vision revealed something unexpected: Many bird
species—not just pigeons—can see UV light. Indeed, with the
exception of night-flying birds such as owls, the eyes of most
birds probably are even more sensitive to ultraviolet light than
they are to what we call visible light. Scientists also have
learned that many birds have