lighting for birds aviary

are full spectrum fluorescent bulbs the same as grow light bulbs and if not what is the different? i have been using the full spectrum for canaries and see adds for grow lamp/lights.

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Welcome to the SDMB, Djabsbirds.

The About This Message Board forum is for questions about the board itself, like questions about rules or problems posting and that sort of thing. Since this is a factual question, it belongs in our General Questions forum. I will move this thread for you. Please take the time to read the forum descriptions before posting.

Moving thread from About This Message Board to General Questions.

Full spectrum light sources are an attempt at producing a natural-looking artificial light - that is, something that will illuminate things to the human eye in approximately the same way as daylight does.

Grow lights may not be the same thing. They have an emission spectrum tailored to promote plant growth, rather than to look good to the human eye.

Other artificial light sources tend to have one or more narrowish peaks of emission in different parts of the visible spectrum, and whilst our eyes may perceive the direct light as ‘white’, the effect when illuminating objects can be weird.

For example, you can have a light source emitting very narrow bands of blue and yellow light, and it looks white - when you shine it on a blue object, it looks blue, and when you shine it on a yellow object, it looks yellow, but when you shine it on a green or red object, they look dimmer than they should, because they absorb more of the yellow and blue light.

What is usually called a grow light emits a bluish light because plants grow taller faster when exposed to blue light. Many bulbs sold as grow lights are actually normal light bulbs with a blue filter over them, therefore they actually provide less light to the plants than they would if the filter were not there because some of the light is blocked by the filter. There are also specialized grow lights with a reddish tint, used to promote flowering in certain plants.

Full spectrum lights are a whole different animal. Unless you want your canaries to look blue or pink, full spectrum is the right choice.

To be fair, there’s probably a gaping hole in the market for a ‘wrong color birbs’ meme.

I read somewhere long back that a bird’s vision extended to the UV end of the spectrum and they saw colors and shades much more than the human eye. Something to consider before you decide.

Here’s a good link to info about a bird’s UV-vision ability and how it helps them. Just thought worth citing :slight_smile:

I had a UV lamp for our Umb Cockatoo (until he bit the metal stand in half!) it) and the bird would seem to pick out, more specifically, certain seed/nut/fruit types when I had it shining upon him through the day (at safe distance, of course). Nowadays, I keep my two rescued birds (Nanday and Monk parrot) next to windows so they have somewhat full-spectrum lighting to at least a small degree. If a bird is kept in area with little sunlight, I’d see adding some UV-source to possibly help them feel more ‘at home’ - but that is just IMHO and is what I have read on various parrot forums in the past.

We are pretty close to adding a third bird (an 8-yr old Umbrella Cockatoo) to the flock and the elderly owner rehoming her says she has a UV lamp to go along with the big cage she has, fwiw. It would seem that it is common for those who know much about birds to provide some UV when its absent for various reasons as listed in linked article. May not be absolutely necessary, but more natural for birds, it seems.