Any suggestions for a glossy black shader - like a raven's feathers?

If, say, I wanted to make this model look more like this.

Just a suggestion - I have no idea if it would work but how about a Color Ramp plugged into Glossy, then into Alt_Specular?  Make Diffuse_Color very dark grey, or even a dark blue/grey, since black doesn't ever occur in nature.

I'll try this myself and see what happens. 

Well, it kinda works but I have no doubt there are much better ways.

I tried something else...

Made Diffuse a lighter blue/grey, then plugged the Color Ramp into that and into Specular and Alt Specular, with a Glossy added for Alt Specular.

It's no doubt hopelessly wrong and BB would have a fit but it's not entirely awful.

IIRC, feathers have so many colours because they bend light due to their fractal nature.  I reckon you'd have a hell of a job reproducing that in Poser but there's bound to be an acceptable work around.  There was a shader by BB for soap bubbles; maybe that would be a useful starting point. 

what I heard was that blue colour in feathers (which may actually be transparent on  microscopic level) is due to scattering, somewhat analogous to scattering causing  sky to look blue, even tho colourless when unpolluted.  anyway, one's glad bill's here to handle it.  IIRC he wrote: poser doesn't scatter blue as well as other colours.

i'm not seeing a picture on that yahoo news page ?

Whut? My mistake, MPL.  I missed the link of the first post.

Quote - i'm not seeing a picture on that yahoo news page ?

Here is a direct link to the image.

And here's another, more photoreal image.  (I wonder if that one is a render, or a Photoshop job.)

And Sam, thanks for the suggestions.  I'll try it.  Gotta be better than the black hole or plastic look I've gotten with my efforts.