Black-crowned night-herons are usually active at night but they’re so busy during the breeding season you might find one awake when the light is good. Then you can see his colors.
Isn’t his red eye awesome!
Other birds have red eyes too. The red-eyed vireo is obvious — it’s in his name — but the rest require some research.
How many red-eyed birds can you name?
Leave a comment with your answer.
p.s. Here’s a question for the experts (I don’t know the answer): Why do they have red eyes?
(photo by Brian Herman)
The birds I can think off the top of my head with red eyes would be the Common Loon, Reb-bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Towhee and Snail Kite. As to why they have red eyes, I haven’t a clue but I do know it makes them look stunning.
Well I don’t know the answer and so I will curious to see who will provide it for us. Love these quizzes and the picture. Sure is a gorgeous feathered tenant of the earth for us to enjoy.
Adult Coopers Hawks have red eyes…
Red-bellied woodpeckers are frequent visitors to my back yard and I never knew they have red eyes until now. Your blog is certainly, ahem, an eye opener, Kate. 😉
Eared Grebe, American Coot, Blue-winged Teal, Canvasback, Wood Duck, Bee Eater, Bronzed Cowbird, a certain type of vulture (can’t think of the name), Inca Dove, Roseate Spoonbill, Rufus Towhee …… and many more
The closest I can find about why they have red eyes simply says it’s because of red pigment but I can’t find anything as to the purpose of the coloring.
You know, whenever I try and do something like this my mind blanks out, so I’ll be kicking myself when I scroll back up and read the other comments. Oh well, that’s the story of my life.
Swallow-tailed Kite, Black-capped Vireo, Pied-billed Grebe, Coopers and Sharpies both have sort of redish eyes, Northern Goshawks have really red eyes.
Okay, I’ll stop guessing and give up. I’m definitely paging through my bird book this afternoon.
(Oops. . . after reading Mr. Gosser’s comment, I think I meant Snail Kite, not Swallow tail. I live in the east and I’ve never bean out west so I haven’t really looked carefully at them.)
Okay, apparently I know just enough about birds to babble like an idiot :). I was thinking of white-tailed Kite, not swallow-tailed and Horned grebe instead of Pied-billed. Apparently, Sharpies and Goshawks both have orange eyes, but in my defense, my National Geographic illustrated field guide shows coopers, sharpies, and goshawks with equally red eyes. But, I do have a photographic bird book, so I checked that one out this afternoon and counted 36 red-eyed birds, including the Black-crowned Night Heron and Red-eyed vireo (a lot more of them had dark orange eyes, so I tried to be conservative.) Here are the North-american birds I counted from the book.
Lesser Prairie Chicken
Wood Duck
Cinnamon Teal
Canvasback
Long-tailed Duck
Red-breasted Merganser
Red-throated Loon
Arctic Loon
Pacific Loon
Yellow-billed Loon
Horned Grebe
Eared Grebe
Western Grebe
Clark’s Grebe
Roseate Spoonbill
American Bittern
Tricolored Heron
Snail Kite
Cooper’s Hawk
Black Rail
King Rail
Purple Gallinule
American Coot
Sandhill Crane
Band-tailled Pigeon
Eurasian Collared Dove
Black-wiskered Vireo
Phainopepla
Cactus Wren
Bronzed Cowbird
Green-tailled Towhee
Spotted Towhee
Eastern Towhee
So, If we say there were 34 possible and say, SAT style, that an incorrect answer is -1/4 points, then I got 1 out of 34, which is a 2.9%. Kate’s quizzes are hard!
P. S. Does anyone know why black-crowned Night Herons eyes turn from yellow, as juveniles, to red, as adults? Do all red-eyed birds do this? Why do I use so many commas? (Okay, you don’t have to try to answer that last one.)
P. P. S. Red-bellied woodpeckers have very dull red eyes, and I wasn’t counting the ones that weren’t obvious, which the red-bellied was definitely not.
Great list, Joshua! I thought about loons but forgot about the ducks. (Duh! Of course the Cinnamon Teal!)
Eyes changing color as they mature: This is fairly common. Red-tailed hawks are a good example. Since birds can see colors I’m sure it’s part of “looking fit for breeding.” There are probably other reasons too.
I’m still wondering “why red eyes?” as opposed to brown, black, blue, green, yellow.
Someone just posted this pic on a flickr.com group I follow.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wschmitz/5834415640/in/pool-jerseybirders
That is an intense peeper.
…hello Kate,
I found this site when doing a search for ‘eyelashes on birds’ because this small, larger than a sparrow bird, but thinner, flew to my windowsill and sat for 30 seconds.
She looked like a movie star !… with eyelashes almost 1/2″ long, not many of them, about 6-7 each eye.
I tend to believe she is the mate of a red breasted, red tipped wing male, my guess would be a small cardinal.
I live in south eastren New Mexico, any ideas..?
Phillip, if the bird you described had a big beak like a cardinal, my guess would be a pyrrhuloxia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhuloxia).
Other possibilities, though these don’t quite have red feathers where you describe tham are: purple finch, cassin’s finch and house finch.
If the beak is small and the male is very, very red I would guess vermilion flycatcher. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion_Flycatcher) They have long bristle feathers around their bills to help them catch bugs in the air. (Click on the photo of the female on the nest at the wiki link to see the bristle feathers.)