Plumage colour of male Common Crossbills Loxia curvirostra: visual assessment validated by colorimetry
Val, Esther del (Creatore), Borrás, Antoni (Creatore), Cabrera, Joseph (Creatore), Senar, Joan Carles (Creatore)
We describe here an affordable method for assessing patterns and colour variations in male Crossbills Laxia spp. Our aim was to validate qualitative colour categories obtained in the field through visual inspection with quantitative data obtained from a colorimeter. Patterns and colour variations of 219 male Common Crossbills Loxia curvirostra were meassuremed using both techniques. We found that there was a close correspondence between the tristimulus scores generated by the colorimeter and our visual scoring system. These results support the accuracy of our visual colour assessment procedure and provide amateurs, field ornithologists and researchers interested in Crossbills with an easy, inexpensive, repeatable and objective alternative to the use of modern electronic devices. In a more general sense, our results suggest that visual colour inspection may in fact be more objective and useful than currently throught
Materiale d'archivio scaricabile, English, 2009