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.
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.
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Eurasian Pygmy-Owl
Europe's smallest owl, a boreal forest specialist that hunts small birds and rodents largely by day. Its feathers are gray-brown to rufous with crisp white spotting and a narrowly barred tail.
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Morepork
New Zealand's small native owl, named for its call and known to Maori as ruru, with dark brown feathers mottled with pale buff spotting and streaked underparts.
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Southern Boobook
Australia's most familiar and widespread owl, named for its distinctive 'boo-book' call, with dark brown feathers boldly spotted white above and streaked buff below.
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Short-toed Snake Eagle
The Short-toed Snake Eagle is a pale-bellied Eurasian eagle with brown upperparts, a mottled brown breast, finely barred flight and tail feathers, and a large owl-like head adapted for scanning the ground for reptile prey.
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Brown Hawk-Owl
The Brown Hawk-Owl is a widespread Asian owl with a hawk-like, tuftless head, dark brown upperparts, and rufous-streaked white underparts.
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Papuan Hawk-Owl
A little-known, long-tailed forest owl endemic to New Guinea, with a hawk-like reduced facial disc and boldly barred underparts.
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Laughing Owl
An extinct New Zealand owl known for its odd, laughter-like call, with soft brown mottled plumage and a paler facial area; now known only from museum specimens.
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Barking Owl
An Australian hawk-owl named for its dog-like barking call, gray-brown above and heavily streaked below, favoring open woodland and riverine forest.
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Eurasian Woodcock
The larger Eurasian relative of the American Woodcock, sharing the same dead-leaf camouflage pattern and forest-floor lifestyle, but with a grayer overall tone and a distinctive slow, owl-like display flight known as roding.
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Northern Hawk-Owl
A falcon-like, day-hunting owl of the boreal forest, with a long tail, pointed wings, and boldly barred underparts, often seen perched conspicuously atop treetops scanning for prey.
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Short-eared Owl
A wide-ranging owl of open grassland and marsh, notable for hunting in daylight on buoyant, moth-like wingbeats, with streaked buffy-brown plumage and ear tufts so small they are rarely visible.
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Honey Buzzard
The Honey Buzzard is a highly variable Eurasian raptor specialized in raiding wasp and bee nests, recognizable by its small, pigeon-like head, dense scale-like facial feathers for protection, and boldly banded tail.
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Northern Harrier
The Northern Harrier, sometimes called the Marsh Hawk, is a slim, long-winged raptor of open grassland and marsh, known for its low, tilting flight, a distinctive white rump patch in all plumages, and an owl-like facial disc that helps it hear prey in the grass.
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