Seagulls can actually see and recognize colorful rainbows—more vividly than we ever could. While humans perceive three primary colors, gulls and many other birds have four types of cone cells in their eyes, including one that detects ultraviolet light. This means they experience a wider, more radiant spectrum of color, seeing subtle tones and patterns invisible to us. When a rainbow arches across the horizon, what we see as a graceful band of hues may unfold before them as a living prism of shimmering energy—ultraviolet threads woven into every drop of light. Perhaps that’s why their flight seems so sure and effortless in moments like this; they are gliding through a world more vivid than ours, one we can only imagine.
Beyond Our Spectrum by Ocean Eversley©2025
The gull sails through a prismed sky,
its wings brushing light we cannot name.
What we call pink, it may see as flame,
a language between air and sea,
written in ultraviolet whispers.
Beneath it, the waves pulse in colors
we’ve never dreamed—
the ocean’s skin alive with shimmer,
the horizon bending softly
to the edge of what we know.
A rainbow arches its silent hymn,
each hue more intricate to the avian eye,
a spectrum wide as memory,
where every drop of rain
becomes a note of light.
We stand in awe of what we see,
while the gull glides through what is unseen—
a fuller world, untranslatable,
where color is a kind of music
and flight, a form of praise.
Perhaps that’s why it moves so freely,
unburdened by our narrower sight—
it flys surrounded by the living pulse of light,
while we, earthbound and dazzled,
can only follow with wonder.