I prefer to see colour with wildlife pics

i think sometimes By removing color, your focus shifts to other visual elements like light, shadow, texture, and composition, revealing details that vibrant hues often distract us from. This effect is common in black and white photography, where the absence of color simplifies a scene and allows us to perceive it in a new, more profound way

Black & white is perfect for penguins...😎

It really depends on the photo. Sometimes I try a photo in black and white; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

What Cheryl said. Sometimes I know when I take a picture that it's intended for black and white, but for bird photos I usually figure it out in processing. It depends on what's most interesting about the picture. B&W helps emphasize the shapes and textures and patterns in the scene, or sometimes the mood of a picture is better served in B&W.

These are a couple of my photos where I think B&W elevates the photo above the color version:
alighting: www.flickr.com/photos/jknelson/51201388484/
Canada Goose, Lillie Park: www.flickr.com/photos/jknelson/51583274384/

I got my start in photography back in the late '70s (high school, navy). B&W is a different animal from color in that it all depends on composition (leading lines, contrast, etc). It's not just taking a color photo and removing the color from it.

I firmly believe new photography students should be initially taught in B&W because all the elements that work to make a good B&W photo also can help make a great color photo. I've seen too many color photos of birds, for example, where the bird is on the left side of the photo looking left out of the photo instead of looking into the photo to draw your eye into it.