This bird has a white face and neck, black eye patches, a black crown, and large ear patches of olive green. It has brown feathers on its side, dark, metallic green wings, and white underparts.

Birds are some of the most colorful animals on Earth, with a palette of rainbow tones to feast your eyes on. Here are our picks for some of our most flamboyant feathered friends.

Best Smoky Eye: Cedar Waxwing Cedar waxwings certainly know how to pull off a smoky-eye look. With their elegant coloring in general, their “eye makeup” is only one component of their beauty.

By mimicking bird feathers, engineers gained insight into how birds control their flight. Wissa sees this as a two-way street. “That’s the power of bioinspired design,” she said.

Eye to the viewfinder I followed the bird, which seemed oblivious to me hidden in my blind. During spring, most male birds are full of themselves and thus are often less wary.

A Brown Booby bird was spotted at Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, Indiana. This is a particularly rare sighting because the Brown Booby is typically found in tropical locations.

A version of this article appears in print on May 28, 2024, Section D, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Don’t Let the Feathers Fool You. Birds’ Lives May Be Quite Dark..