Nature's blackest black belongs to the void-like face of the superb bird-of-paradise, which absorbs 99.95% of any sunlight that dares touch it. But I think king penguins must be a close second. The feathers on their heads create a black hole that frames that amazing sunburst of oranges and yellows.
Most penguins are black and white, as are many seabirds. And many common birds like crows and ravens are black. But the deep black of the king penguin's face is abyss black, betraying detail only in the windblown sand or imperfections of its feathers. It's extraordinary. The only thing blacker on Earth are materials made from carbon nanotubes like Vantablack.
Freshly molted penguins on Saunders Island show the contrast between the silvery blue of their wings and bodies and the pitch darkness of their faces. I love the downy, discarded feathers still blowing in the wind around them.
We see mixes of red, green and blue thanks to the three types of cone cells in our eyes. But king penguins and other birds are tetrachromatic. They see a fourth color, ultraviolet, which greatly expands their color vision.
The superb bird-of-paradise uses its ultrablack face to frame its amazing blue eyepatches and the brilliant yellow of its open mouth during its courtship ritual. And we can't even appreciate the ultraviolet colors.
Researchers at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique discovered that the king penguin's beak glows ultraviolet. We can't see that color, but framed by its ultrablack face, the beak becomes a bright adornment for courting male king penguins to woo their mate, just like the bird-of-paradise.
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