Feather & Bird Encyclopedia
Search and identify feathers by species — with feather type, plumage, colours, size, habitat, and how to tell them apart in the field.
Common Merganser
The Common Merganser is a large, sleek fish-eating duck whose male combines a glossy dark green head with an almost entirely white body faintly tinged pink.
waterfowl
Black Tern
A distinctive marsh tern that turns almost entirely sooty-black during the breeding season, a striking departure from the pale gray-and-white pattern typical of most terns.
seabird
Barrow's Goldeneye
Barrow's Goldeneye is a striking western and northern diving duck distinguished from the similar Common Goldeneye by a crescent-shaped white face patch and bolder black markings on the back.
waterfowl
African Pygmy Falcon
One of the smallest raptors in the world, this tiny falcon of African thornveld shows crisp white underparts against a grey or chestnut back, often nesting alongside colonial weaverbirds.
raptor
Slaty-backed Forest Falcon
A large, uncommon forest-falcon notable for its unusually plain plumage - solid slate-grey above and mostly unbarred white below, unlike most of its close relatives.
raptor
Spotted Owl
An old-growth forest specialist of western North America, dark brown overall with distinctive rounded white spotting across its plumage, dependent on structurally complex mature forest.
owl
Pied Currawong
A large, mostly black Australian songbird, the Pied Currawong is marked by white patches on the wings and tail tip, and a bright yellow eye that stands out against its dark plumage.
songbird
Mourning Dove
A common, slender dove whose long, pointed, white-edged tail feathers and soft muted tan-brown coloring make it a familiar sight and sound across open country.
dove pigeon
Lineated Woodpecker
A widespread Neotropical woodpecker with a shaggy red crest and bold white stripes running down the sides of its neck, common in forest edge habitats from Mexico to northern Argentina.
woodpecker
Flame-colored Tanager
A mountain-forest tanager of Mexico and Central America, the male Flame-colored Tanager combines orange-red body plumage with a distinctively black-streaked back and white wing bars.
songbird
Eyebrowed Thrush
The Eyebrowed Thrush is an olive-brown Asian thrush marked by a bold white eyebrow stripe and an orange-buff wash across the breast, breeding in Siberian taiga and wintering in tropical Asia.
songbird
Green-winged Macaw
A very large red macaw distinguished from the similar scarlet macaw by a broad green wing band and thin lines of red feathers crossing its bare white face.
parrot
Greater Yellownape
A large, uniformly olive-green woodpecker of Asian forests, best recognized by its shaggy yellow nape crest rather than the black-and-white patterning typical of pied woodpeckers.
woodpecker
Great Skua
A powerfully built, gull-sized seabird cloaked in dark brown plumage flecked with rufous and buff, best known for its bold white wing-flash and aggressive, piratical habits.
seabird
Black-thighed Falconet
One of the smallest raptors in the world, this Southeast Asian falconet shows glossy black upperparts and thighs against white underparts, with a small rufous forehead patch as its key mark.
raptor
Black-necked Stilt
A tall, slender American shorebird in crisp black-and-white plumage, best known for its extremely long, thin pink-red legs that trail well beyond the tail in flight.
shorebird
American Barn Owl
A pale, heart-faced owl of open farmland and grassland, instantly recognizable by its golden and grey speckled upperparts, ghostly white underside, and exceptionally soft, silent-flight feathers.
owl
Yellow Grosbeak
A large, big-billed songbird of Mexican dry forests, the Yellow Grosbeak shows a golden-yellow body set off by boldly patterned black-and-white wings.
songbird
Wattled Crane
The largest crane in Africa, a grey wading bird with a black cap, striking white feathers hanging from the throat, and long fleshy wattles dangling below the face.
wading bird
Tufted Duck
The Tufted Duck is a strikingly patterned Eurasian diving duck, easily recognized by the male's drooping head tuft and sharp contrast between black upperparts and white flanks.
waterfowl
Superb Starling
A dazzling East African songbird with glossy blue-green upperparts, a bold white breast band, and a warm chestnut-orange belly, common around towns and savanna.
songbird
Nicobar Pigeon
The Nicobar Pigeon is a striking island pigeon with long, shimmering hackle-like neck feathers in shifting metallic greens and coppers, set off by a pure white tail.
dove pigeon
Red-breasted Meadowlark
A grassland songbird of South America, with males showing a striking bright red throat and breast against an otherwise black body, while females are cryptically streaked brown.
songbird
Powerful Woodpecker
A large woodpecker of Andean cloud forest, closely related to the Crimson-crested and Magellanic Woodpeckers but with distinctive buffy, barred underparts rather than clean black-and-white.
woodpecker