Another stange gift of the elves or lost contacts?

[Gwaihir the Windlord]

The were a high race and beautiful, the Elder Children of the world... they were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin...

(Appendix F)

Come on, surely, you should all remember this fact. The eye-changing of Legolas in the movie can, I think, be attributed to what is described in the following paragraph, from the same source.

This old word ('elf') was indeed the only one available, and was once fitted to apply to such memories of these people as Men preserved, or to the making of men's minds not wholly dissimilar... But it may now suggest fancies either pretty or silly, as unlike to the Quendi of old as the butterfly is to the swift falcon -- not that any of the Quendi ever possessed wings, as unnatural to them as to Men.