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.
Beautiful Sunbird
A savanna sunbird of sub-Saharan Africa whose breeding males combine an iridescent green head and back with a scarlet breast band and elongated tail feathers.
songbird
Splendid Sunbird
A brightly colored West African sunbird with an iridescent green head, a vivid scarlet breast patch, and a dark, glossy belly.
songbird
Regal Sunbird
A jewel-toned montane sunbird of central Africa's highlands, males combining emerald green with a golden-yellow and scarlet underside.
songbird
Long-tailed Meadowlark
A southern South American grassland songbird whose males flash a brilliant scarlet throat and breast against blackish upperparts.
songbird
Greater Double-collared Sunbird
A southern African sunbird whose males flash an iridescent green throat and a broad scarlet breast band bordered in violet.
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
Southern Red Bishop
A small African weaver whose breeding males turn brilliant scarlet and black, one of the most vividly colored birds of Africa's wetland grasses.
songbird
Fork-tailed Sunbird
A small sunbird of southern China and Southeast Asia named for its notched, forked tail, with males showing a scarlet throat and iridescent green crown.
songbird
Superb Sunbird
A vividly patterned West and Central African sunbird whose males combine a violet throat, scarlet breast band, metallic blue-green head, and bright yellow belly.
songbird
Summer Tanager
Unlike its scarlet cousin, the male Summer Tanager is rosy-red from head to tail with no contrasting black wings, a year-round trait unique among North American tanagers.
songbird
Scaly-naped Pigeon
A dark Caribbean forest pigeon whose neck and nape feathers show a striking scaled, iridescent bronze-purple pattern.
dove pigeon
Oriental Turtle-Dove
A large Asian turtle-dove with a distinctive scaled, rufous-and-black back pattern and a bold striped neck patch.
dove pigeon
Greater White-fronted Goose
A brown, scale-patterned goose named for the band of white feathers at the base of its bill, with variable black barring across the belly that gives it the nickname "specklebelly."
waterfowl
Jardine's Parrot
Jardine's Parrot is a stocky African forest parrot whose green feathers are neatly edged in black, giving a scaled texture, accented by orange-red patches on the head and shoulders.
parrot
Golden-crowned Kinglet
A tiny, hyperactive conifer specialist named for its glowing crown patch, with soft olive body feathers and delicately edged flight feathers scaled to its diminutive size.
songbird
Green Junglefowl
An Indonesian junglefowl covered in glossy, scale-patterned green-black feathers, with a rounded, multicolored comb unlike any other junglefowl species.
gamebird
Dickinson's Kestrel
Dickinson's Kestrel is a small, short-tailed African kestrel with grey plumage overall and a finely scaled pale back, often associated with palm trees in savanna and woodland of southeastern Africa.
raptor
Kalij Pheasant
A forest pheasant of the Himalayan foothills and South Asia, with males showing overall glossy blue-black plumage and red facial skin, and considerable variation in pale scaling among subspecies.
gamebird
Ring Ouzel
A blackbird relative of upland Europe, told from the Eurasian Blackbird by its bold white crescent across the breast and pale-scaled wing feathers.
songbird
Dusky Thrush
The Dusky Thrush is a boldly marked Siberian thrush with heavily scaled blackish-and-white underparts and a bright rufous wing patch, wintering across East Asia and occasionally reaching North America.
songbird
Roseate Tern
A pale, elegant tern with unusually long tail streamers and a delicate pink blush to the breeding-season underparts, generally scarcer and more restricted to select coastal colonies than its close relatives.
seabird
California Quail
A familiar western quail known for the male's forward-drooping black head plume and scaled gray-brown body feathers, common in chaparral and suburban gardens alike.
gamebird
Lady Amherst's Pheasant
A striking pheasant of dense mountain thickets in southwestern China, with males showing a black-and-white scaled cape, a red crest, and one of the longest tails of any pheasant.
gamebird
Green Peafowl
A peafowl of Southeast Asia showing less difference between the sexes than its Indian relative, with both males and females displaying scaled iridescent green body plumage.
gamebird