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.
Oriental Pied Hornbill
The Oriental Pied Hornbill is a medium-sized Asian hornbill with strongly contrasting black-and-white plumage, including a tail marked with white outer feathers. It is one of the more adaptable hornbills, tolerating forest edge and even wooded parkland.
other
Orange-winged Amazon
The Orange-winged Amazon is a mid-sized, widespread South American parrot named for the bright orange patch revealed in its flight feathers.
parrot
African Grey Parrot
A medium-sized grey parrot with pale-edged scalloped body feathers and a bright red tail, native to equatorial Africa.
parrot
Chestnut-headed Oropendola
A medium-sized oropendola with a rich chestnut head and neck contrasting against a black body, a pale bill, and a small patch of yellow at the tail tip.
songbird
Pectoral Sandpiper
A medium-sized sandpiper with a sharply demarcated brown, streaked breast band ending abruptly against a clean white belly.
shorebird
Rhinoceros Auklet
A dusky, medium-sized auk related to the puffins, named for the small horn-like projection that grows at the base of the bill in breeding adults.
seabird
Red-fronted Macaw
A medium-sized olive-green macaw with a bright red forehead band and red patch around the eye, restricted to dry canyon country in Bolivia.
parrot
Red Knot
A stocky, medium-sized sandpiper famous for spectacular long-distance migrations, showing warm salmon-red underparts in breeding plumage that fade to plain, softly scaled gray for winter.
shorebird
Chinese Grosbeak
A medium-sized East Asian finch with a black head, gray-brown body, and a bright yellow bill tipped in black, smaller and more widespread than its relative the Japanese Grosbeak.
songbird
Intermediate Egret
A medium-sized all-white egret of Asia, Africa, and Australia, best told apart from its larger and smaller relatives by bill proportions and the extent of bare skin around the eye.
wading bird
Asian Openbill
A medium-sized South and Southeast Asian stork named for the distinctive gap between its upper and lower mandibles, an adaptation for handling its favored prey, with greyish-white plumage and black flight feathers.
wading bird
Common Gull
A neat, medium-sized gull of Europe and Asia known as Mew Gull in North American populations, the Common Gull shows pale gray back feathers, black wingtips with white spots, and a gentle, rounded head shape.
seabird
Ring-billed Gull
A common, adaptable medium-sized gull of North America named for the black band around its bill, the Ring-billed Gull shows pale gray back feathers and yellow legs, thriving in habitats from lakeshores to parking lots.
seabird
New Zealand Falcon
The New Zealand Falcon, or karearea, is the country's only native falcon, a fast, powerfully built raptor of forest and high country with dark brown upperparts and heavily streaked cream underparts.
raptor
Firecrest
The Firecrest is one of Europe's smallest songbirds, a mite of a bird whose soft, downy contour feathers are topped with a blazing orange-and-black crown stripe unlike any similarly sized species.
songbird
Gray Hawk
A slim, pale gray hawk of cottonwood-lined streams in the borderlands, notable for its finely barred plumage and slender, accipiter-like proportions among the buteos.
raptor
Indian Scops Owl
The Indian Scops Owl is a small, grey-brown owl of the Indian subcontinent whose finely mottled, bark-like feathers help it disappear against tree trunks by day.
owl
Parasitic Jaeger
A sleek, agile seabird intermediate in size between the two other jaegers, identified in breeding adults by narrow, pointed central tail feathers and a swift, falcon-like flight.
seabird
Pileated Woodpecker
The largest common North American woodpecker, unmistakable for its crow-like size, deep black body, flaming red crest, and bold white neck stripes.
woodpecker
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.
owl
Horned Screamer
A large, turkey-sized waterbird of South American wetlands, unmistakable for the long, slender horn-like spine projecting from its forehead. Its blackish, white-speckled plumage and loud trumpeting calls carry across open marshland.
other
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.
shorebird
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.
owl
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.
raptor