Chimera Wrote:In snowy owls young are born with a lot of black and white in their feathers. As they grow older, the males become whiter and whiter (sometimes loosing all but a few specks of black in a rare few places) while the females remain covered in black as well as white. So in my case as a snowy owl harpykin, its the reverse. Males are sill smaller then females but females have 'more color' to them though in their case both sexes use in camouflage.
When I was talking about colorful as versus less colorful, I was more referring to sexual dimorphism (in those species in which it exists), and how male birds -- when there *is* sexual dimorphism -- tend to be colored in ways that seem designed specifically to attract mates, while females tend to be more camouflaged, larger, heavier, and in the cases of many songbird species, for example, much "duller" (at least to a human eye).
I did go and look up Snowy Owl coloration, and I saw what you were talking about. But just because the males tend to be whiter, doesn't mean that being whiter is different, in this case, than a House Finch male having a magenta head. That is, maybe Snowy Owl males are whiter because generations of female Snowy Owls have selected for that. <!-- s

--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s

--> The female form seems to follow the pattern of being optimized for camouflage, in addition to being larger and heavier than the male (things that are helpful for egg-laying, nesting, and defending young).
(edited to close a tag)