Tuesday 24 January 2012

Flock of woodpigeons feeding in wood








I like woodpigeons,they have a strange attractiveness about them something about that greyish colour which is offset by the whitish bars on their wings and around their neck.Photographed under ultra violet light the white bars are extremely vivid and visible from a long way off.The ones on their wings signal to each other and are magnified by flapping so the rest of the flock are notified of the others actions like a good feeding spot or danger.The neck bars play a role in mating behaviour.Woodpigeons eyes are very sensitive to the ultra violet areas of the light spectrum and so can pick this up very easily as well as the colours of various plants they eat that are very visible at this range too.Now that,s an idea,a type of trail camera that instead of picking up infra red,picks up ultra violet instead or as well as.The bird at the front in the first pic is a sort of advanced guard while the others are waiting in the wings,up in tree branches to be more precise and they won,t come down to feed for quite some while,an hour in this case until they are quite sure the first sacrificial birds are safe.Strangely enough when spooked these same first to feed birds are often the last to fly off........

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