Gorgeous metallic blue butterfly actually isn't blue; it just looks that way:

[tblue37]

Link to tweet

[CrispyQ]

1. Same with birds.

Blue birds aren't really blue.

Bluebirds aren't really blue. They just look that way to us.
Susan PikeSpecial to Seacoastonline

https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/2021/12/28/nature-news-bluebirds-arent-blue-but-use-structural-coloration/9022497002/

snip...

I’ve found enough blue jay feathers in the forest, picked them up, and twirled them between my fingers to know that blue jay feathers aren’t truly blue ... that it is a trick of the light. When light is shining on them, they look blue; when light is shining through them, they look gray or black. My epiphany for this winter was noticing that the bluebirds at my feeder are the same. They don’t look blue unless light is shining on them.

In the light of a low dawn, even with my camera zoomed to the feathers, there is no blue. But as the sun's long rays top the trees and hit those feathers, the blue becomes dazzling. It turns out that none of the blue birds we see in our woods, in fact no birds on Earth (as far as we know), are blue due to blue pigments. The blue is all due to physics not chemistry, light interacting with structures that act as prisms.

I have lots of blue jay feathers, too, & it's true they are gray, not blue, unless they are in the light.

[cyclonefence]

2. OMG

Nobody tell the Mighty Monarch!!!!!

(go Team Venture)