This is Bird Note.

Above a desert landscape, a raven source sleek black feathers against a vast blue sky.

The desert seems an unlikely choice for this all black bird, but ravens thrive even in the hot

arid southwest, where common sense suggests that light-colored feathers would be a better adaptation

to the scorching sun.

But as it turns out, a raven's black plumage works quite well in the desert. Black feathers

do conduct the sun's warming rays, but they concentrate that solar heat near the feather's

surface. All it takes is a light breeze to move all that heat away from the raven's dark feathers.

Light-colored feathers absorb some of the sun's rays, too, but they also tend to trap the heat

closer to the skin, where it's harder for cooling breezes to reach. So in even a slight wind,

the skin of a black feathered bird stays cooler than the skin of a white feathered one.

For Bird Note, I'm Ashley Aherne.

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