A visual artist is often profoundly aware of the ways that colors enhance the beauty of the world.
As a human you have 3 kinds of cone receptors in your eyes allowing you to see the primary colors. A bird has 4! They can see ultraviolet and violet colors that we can’t. Plus their eyes are made in other ways different than ours which means they can see more subtle differences in the primary colors and the colors appear sharper, more vivid. It makes sense that feathers have adapted to birds’ visual abilities which means that for a bird, feathers show even more colors and patterns than we know. So imagine my disappointment with my human eyes and desire to see like a bird when I learned more about what the world looks like to them.
A black and white feather such as this Merganser's may appear to a bird as a shimmering wonder of violets and blues.