# Roseate Spoonbill, study for book Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom

- By: Abbott Handerson Thayer (born Boston, MA 1849-died Dublin, NH 1921)
- Date: ca. 1905-1909
- Medium: oil on wood
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 8 1/4 x 10 5/8 in. (21.0 x 26.9 cm.)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the heirs of Abbott Handerson Thayer
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=23945)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/8da55e2012aa2e442d9af87637babe35.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In 1909, Abbott Handerson Thayer and his son, Gerald, published a controversial book titled Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, offering their theory of animal camouflage. Thayer believed that the coloration of animals, no matter how eye-catching, was meant to disguise them in nature through what he called "countershading." Even bright pink flamingoes would vanish against a similar colored sky at sunset or sunrise. No matter that at times their brilliant feathers were highly visible, their coloration would protect them from predators at crucial moments so that "the spectator seems to see right through the space occupied by an opaque animal."