Fairly Ranking the Most Brilliant Birds

After I finished the project of my last post I still had a giant collection of processed bird color data from BirdColorBase where every way I sliced it revealed new and mind-blowing birds. The minimal treatment I gave in that post just wasn’t enough. I had to dig in more. I set out to find the brightest, most brilliant, most colorful birds. I’m not going to make you wade through an essay’s worth of math and discussion before I show you my top 40. Here it is. Orange-breasted Bunting Andean Cock-of-the-rock Variable Kingfisher Asian Green Broadbill Black-hooded Oriole Plum-throated Cotinga Red-winged Parrot Emperor Fairywren Scarlet Macaw Blue-crowned Woodnymph Golden-tailed Sapphire Rose-bellied Bunting Guianan Cock-of-the-rock Paradise Tanager White-bellied Canary Green Thorntail Crimson Rosella Blue-and-yellow Macaw Crested Quetzal Scarlet Ibis Blue-headed Parrot Prothonotary Warbler Hunter’s Sunbird Yellow-crowned Amazon Violet-tailed Sunbird Doherty’s Bush-shrike Long-tailed…