The dawn light can play tricks
on the eyes of the morning watch as they scan the sea. But the sea I stare at
through my binoculars is green and any glinting leaf could be the emerald back
of an Amazon parrot. All the more shocking then is a glint of sapphire in the
trees. I take my binoculars down and glance far to my left. No. I couldn’t
possibly have caught the ocean out of the corner of my view I was focused in
the opposite direction. I turn back and raise my binoculars. Sure enough the sapphire
form of a parrot dips into view on a swaying wind bent bough.
“Well,
call me Ishmael,” I mutter “the blue parrot.”
Unlike
his name-sake Moby dick the parrot is not a manifestation of hell sent to
torment us. He does, however, seem to have some element of the whales
omnipresence, being reported at opposite ends of the island almost simultaneously.
Despite this quality he is simply a fledgling from last breeding season born
with the inability to produce a protein.
The protein
psittacofulvin is a protein only found in parrots. It is used, instead of the carotenoid
pigments in other birds, to produce colour from yellow through to red. To
become green parrots use light manipulating microstructures in the feather, reflecting
blue light, alongside yellow reflecting psittacofulvins. Our Moby dick has a
mutation that prevents the production of psittacofulvin, but retaining the
feather microstructures, meaning that any yellow feather is white and any green
feather is bright blue. This has a myriad of fascinating (to me) potential
impacts on the bird, such as their resistance to UV (psittacofulvins are incredibly
resistant to UV damage) and their sense of colour vision, but I shall not go on
about those here.
I simply
wish to share a glimpse of some fascinating science.
Legend
says that Moby dick is the herald of death and it seems this is a trait
preserved within the parrot homage to the leviathan. The deaths witnessed since my sighting (Monday
5th Aug) of Moby dick stands at: 1 Parrot chick, 1 cat and 13
goats.
Just
have to keep reminding myself;
