Camouflage.....How effective?

I recently got my hands on the latest camouflage pattern from Jack Pyke. Called 'Wild Trees Grassland' it's mainly designed for use around the waters edge, in amongst reeds and rushes. Being a wetlands pattern will probably put alot of Airguners off, we don't often have a need to hunt in that sort of environment, and, apart from the edge of golden crop fields even I couldn't see much of a use for it. I stubbornly wore it however, mainly because I think it looks really good in all of it's high definition glory, and boy am I glad I did.

I noticed right away that, while it looks like it stands out massively in green areas, rabbits seemed totally fooled by it. That's nothing too impressive really, rabbits aren't the wisest of quarry but it did get me thinking. Then I went over to visit my pals, the 'Red Squirrel Rangers' in Cumbria and I again noticed just how much it seemed to stand out in certain areas, yet the squirrels, both Red and Grey, couldn't seem to see it at all.
The reason is very simple, both rabbits and squirrels are monochromats, that is, they don't see colours, instead they see in greyscale. It's estimated that humans can see 1 million different hues, and monochromats can only see 100, and because they cannot see actual colours, their vision is made up of 100 different shades of grey, from practically pitch black, to white.

I decided to experiment with the pattern by simply taking a picture and then using editing software to make it appear greyscale. That way we'd be able to see exactly, or as close as possible, what they can see when they look at a hunter wearing it. I added a slight blur to the image in an effort to show what the pattern might look like if the animal was scanning around looking for danger, instead of focused directly on you.

 As you can see, in the first picture the pattern doesn't do a particularly good job, at least to our eyes, which can distinguish the colour differences and make it impossible for the lines and shades of the pattern to effectively break up my outline.

In the second picture, however, the tones and hues look very similar and suddenly the patterns disruptive lines do an excellent job of tricking the brain, which usually relies on recognisable shapes and patterns to spot objects in a highly detailed environments. In greyscale at least, it blends very well.

Unfortunatly non of this applies to avian species because they not only see in colour, but they can actually see far into the UV end of the spectrum. This means that not only do we need a good colour match, but washing our clothes in UV reflective soap powder (added to make colours seem brighter and clothes cleaner) could actually make us glow!!

Now, how do you take pictures in UV..............