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.
Sooty Shearwater
A dark, uniformly sooty-brown shearwater whose silvery-white underwing linings provide a striking flash of contrast during its long, powerful ocean flights.
seabird
Sacred Ibis
A large white wading bird with a bare black head and curved black bill, historically significant in ancient Egyptian culture and common across African wetlands today.
wading bird
Ruddy Turnstone
A boldly patterned, harlequin-like shorebird known for flipping stones and debris in search of food, with breeding feathers combining rufous, black, and white in a striking tortoiseshell pattern.
shorebird
Eurasian Bullfinch
A stocky, short-billed finch with a black cap, grey back, and a rosy-pink breast in males, easily told by its bright white rump patch in flight.
songbird
Hazel Grouse
A small, secretive forest grouse of northern Eurasia, best known for its finely patterned gray-brown plumage and a bold black-and-white throat patch in males.
gamebird
Grey-headed Dove
A quiet forest-floor dove of Central America, identified by its pale grey head, white throat, and a faint metallic sheen across the back of its neck.
dove pigeon
Grey Falcon
The Grey Falcon is a rare, strikingly pale falcon of Australia's remote arid interior, its soft grey-and-white plumage making it one of the palest falcons in the world.
raptor
Ceylon Spurfowl
A shy, dark forest gamebird endemic to Sri Lanka, recognized by rich chestnut-brown plumage dotted with white spots and, in males, bare red facial skin.
gamebird
Blackpoll Warbler
A small wood-warbler famous for its extremely long migratory flights, showing a black cap and white cheeks in breeding males and a plainer streaked plumage in fall.
songbird
Black Swan
An Australian swan with distinctively curled, sooty black-gray body feathers and a striking red bill, its white flight feathers hidden until the wings are spread.
waterfowl
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
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