(both laugh)
I wish I had that on film.
All right guys,
forever ago,
Mel will not forever go.
But it was a while ago.
Mel wrote an amazing blog post
for bird tricks called "Using light to communicate".
And it was about parrots that use light to communicate.
And I wanted her to make a video form of it.
So today I'm going to literally hand over the reigns to her
and film her doing this because it is an amazing subject.
Something that she has been willing to share
with us and our masterclasses here
in Australia and something that I feel
like people don't really know about.
- Yeah.
- They don't really understand it.
So here we go.
(cheerful music)
- As an animal, we see color quite well.
We have three different types of cone cells at the back
of our eyes that allow us to see color.
Birds have four.
What that means in everyday language is they
can actually see UV light and we can't.
This can actually be quite frustrating for us
as far as- (Jamieleigh laughs)
body language is concerned.
It's very hard to concentrate with these guys doing this.
(laughs)
Really? .
So, what I was trying to say
you will actually notice while they're even on me,
that they're moving their feathers around.
They can puff the feathers out,
they can pull them in tight,
they can make their necks longer.
What they're doing when they do that is they're
actually changing the way they reflect light.
It's particularly obvious in Eclectus parrots
but it's relevant to other parrots too.
These guys, as you can see, are very bright,
very shiny.
So they reflect a lot of light.
(Jamieleigh laughs)
Now why that's relevant to whether
or not they can see UV light,
is to their eyes they actually change color
when they move their feathers.
Now we've got some photos we can show you about that.
(upbeat music)
The unfortunate side of that for us
is that there's an entire silent form
of communication.
A lot of people ask me
why their bird bit them for no reason.
To them
it's not obvious
and they say, "it's just started to bit me."
I find that often the bird has actually been moving
its feathers around and
actually communicating
with the people
without them even noticing.
They're not seeing the color changes
cause to them they're seeing green or a red bird,
but from the birds perspective,
they've basically been screaming
at the person and haven't been answered.
So they get very frustrated and they bite.
It quietest parrot is the one that does that quite quickly.
You'll find lowerkeys change colors so fast
that it's frequent, that they get unexpected bites.
So what I've been telling my clients is to
actually take note of when their birds moved their feathers
and which feathers they move.
It gives them a good idea
of what to watch out for body language-wise
to prevent biting,
to prevent getting their bird frustrated.
You'll find with the aches the actual chest feathers
tend to smooth down when they want to interact.
Another thing with the males
you sometimes actually see it with your own eyes,
They pull their head feathers in really tight
which makes their head a really bright, brilliant green
but their back can appear quite a dark green in contrast.
As opposed to when they stay calm and approachable
and it's a uniform standard green the whole body through.
We don't know exactly what color the birds are seeing,
but we can get some idea by either taking photo
through a UV filter over it or using a black light.
If you actually Google different parrots in black light
you will see there's a lot of images taken
from studies done,
where they're seeing habits
have fluorescent displays,
particularly in relation to mating.
One other useful thing to remember in relation
to the changes in color
is that the brighter the light,
the more intense the communication is going to be.
So if you've got a bird that is out of control
often you can calm it down,
by just flicking the light off
or deaming the lights in the room
cause you are toning down the conversation immediately.
Fluorescent lights, particularly bad for birds.
It's almost like being stuck under a strobe light.
They have a higher flicker rate
than what we can actually see.
So it's like being constantly under a flashing light.
I get this a lot in the vet clinics,
cause for some reason we seem like fluorescent glimpse
in vet clinics,
so the birds are already stressed
and the fluorescent light can just set them off
a little bit more.
But if they like just see the light from the window
they calm down immediately.
So that's quite a helpful tip to know that.
I think this is a topic that we're going to know more about
in say 10 years time.
There's not a lot of studies into it.
We are are starting to see some studies when
light can actually affect the migratory patterns of birds.
There's oil rigs set up previously had red globes.
And they're finding that the birds channel towards that
there's more incidences where they're having problems
with birds on oil rigs.
They changed the globes to blue
and they found they had less problems
which is quite interesting.
So there's more to light with relation
to birds than we actually understand at the moment.
And the more we study it, the more we're going to find out.
- All right, guys, if you guys want to know more
about this topic, because like Mel said
there's not a lot of information out there,
she has more information.
So I'm going to leave some links
and resources in the video description for you
if you guys want to check those out.
So be sure to do it,
and let us know in the comments
what you thought about this topic
because I don't think anybody else is talking about it.
So thank you, Mel.
- No problem.
(beep)
What a lot of people don't realize about birds is
that their
vision, (Jamieleigh laughs)
And Vackos thank you.
What I mean by that is as an animal
we see color quite well.
That is not going to work
with the cockatoo in the background.
(laughs)
No eating the buttons on my shirt.
Not today.
- [Jamieleigh] Not today!
What's each other got?
You got some jealousy going on.
- Oh I do.
(laughs)
- [Jamieleigh] All the boys want you.
- Yes. The side effect of the job.
(laughs)