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.
Snail Kite
A marsh-dwelling raptor with a thin, deeply curved bill for extracting apple snails, and feathers ranging from slaty gray in males to warm streaked brown in females and young birds.
raptor
Blue-throated Macaw
A large blue-and-yellow macaw with a distinctive patch of blue feathers on the throat, native to a small area of seasonally flooded savanna in Bolivia.
parrot
Swallow-tailed Kite
A graceful, boldly two-toned raptor with a deeply forked tail, whose sharp black-and-white feathers are unlike almost any other North American bird of prey.
raptor
Reeves's Pheasant
A pheasant of central China renowned for having the longest tail feathers of any bird in its family, combined with golden, black-scaled body plumage and a bold black-and-white head pattern.
gamebird
Wedge-tailed Eagle
Australia's largest bird of prey, distinguished from all other eagles by its remarkably long, diamond-shaped tail feathers, the longest relative to body size of any eagle.
raptor
Bald Eagle
North America's national bird, whose pure white head and tail feathers contrasting with dark brown body plumage make the adult unmistakable, though immatures take years to acquire this pattern.
raptor
Crested Caracara
A bold, long-legged raptor of southern South America's open grasslands, with a black cap, cream neck, and barred breast that make its feathers unmistakable among ground-foraging birds of prey.
raptor
Meadow Pipit
The Meadow Pipit is a small, streaky brown songbird of open country, its cryptic, heavily streaked feathers providing camouflage against grass and heather.
songbird
Chipping Sparrow
The Chipping Sparrow is a small, neat sparrow recognized in breeding plumage by its bright rufous crown feathers over a clean, unstreaked gray breast.
songbird
Garganey
A small, strongly migratory Eurasian dabbling duck; breeding males show a bold white eyebrow stripe and long, drooping striped scapular feathers, while females resemble other small brown teal.
waterfowl
Grey Heron
A tall, still-hunting wading bird whose pale grey body plumage, black head plumes, and dark flight feathers make it one of the most recognizable large waterbirds in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
wading bird
Common Swift
The Common Swift is an almost entirely aerial bird with long, scythe-like flight feathers and uniformly sooty-brown plumage, built for a life spent on the wing far more than any songbird.
other
Nanday Conure
A green South American conure easily told by its solid black head, or hood, along with a small blue patch on the breast and red-feathered thighs.
parrot
Lined Forest Falcon
A small, shy Amazonian forest-falcon closely resembling the Barred Forest Falcon but with much finer, more closely-spaced barring on its underside feathers.
raptor
Lesser Rhea
A smaller relative of the Greater Rhea found in Patagonia and the high Andes, with soft mottled brown plumage flecked with pale feather tips that give it a speckled appearance.
other
Scaled Dove
A small South American dove whose breast and neck feathers carry dark, crescent-shaped edges that overlap like fish scales.
dove pigeon
Ruppell's Vulture
A large African vulture best known for its scaly, scalloped-looking plumage created by pale-edged dark brown feathers, and famous for flying at higher altitudes than almost any other bird.
raptor
Great Spotted Woodpecker
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is a striking black-and-white bird with bold white wing patches, a crimson undertail, and stiff, pointed tail feathers adapted for bracing against tree trunks while excavating and drumming.
woodpecker
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.
owl
Military Macaw
A green macaw with a small red forehead patch and blue-edged wing and tail feathers, found in foothill forests and canyon country from Mexico to South America.
parrot
Wilson's Phalarope
A slim, needle-billed shorebird of prairie wetlands, Wilson's Phalarope shows a striking chestnut neck stripe in breeding plumage and plain gray-and-white feathers otherwise, unusual among birds for its reversed sexual dichromatism.
shorebird
Southern Cassowary
A large, flightless rainforest bird, the Southern Cassowary has coarse, hair-like black plumage and a tall bony head casque, with its vivid blue-and-red coloring confined to bare skin rather than feathers.
other
Bare-legged Owl
A small Cuban endemic owl notable for its bare, unfeathered legs, an unusual trait among owls that otherwise mostly have feathered tarsi.
owl
Pine Siskin
The Pine Siskin is a small, heavily streaked finch whose brown feathers show flashes of yellow in the wings and tail, and whose winter range shifts unpredictably year to year.
songbird