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.
Common Green Magpie
A vividly green forest corvid with a bold black mask and chestnut wing patch, whose color can fade toward blue in old feathers.
corvid
Common Green Pigeon
The Common Green Pigeon is a widespread South Asian pigeon combining yellowish-green plumage with a grey mantle and bright yellow legs.
dove pigeon
Mallard
The world's most familiar duck, identifiable from almost any single wing feather by its glossy blue speculum bordered in white, shared by both sexes.
waterfowl
American Goldfinch
The American Goldfinch is famous for males turning vivid lemon-yellow with black wings and cap in breeding season, then molting to a dull olive plumage the rest of the year.
songbird
Passenger Pigeon
Once among the most numerous birds in North America, the Passenger Pigeon was a slender, fast-flying species with a long pointed tail and iridescent neck patch, driven to extinction by the early 1900s.
dove pigeon
Red Junglefowl
The wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, with males displaying glossy orange-gold neck hackles and long, curved, iridescent black tail feathers.
gamebird
Atlantic Canary
The wild ancestor of the domestic canary, a streaky yellow-green island finch native to the Canary Islands, Azores, and Madeira.
songbird
Rock Pigeon
A stocky, familiar city bird whose feather color is famously variable, though wild-type individuals retain a blue-gray body with two dark wingbars and an iridescent green-purple neck.
dove pigeon
Northern Raven
The largest songbird in the world, with massive black flight feathers and a distinctive wedge-shaped tail, plus shaggy throat feathers unlike any other corvid.
corvid
Eurasian Treecreeper
The Eurasian Treecreeper has cryptic, bark-patterned upperpart feathers that provide near-perfect camouflage against tree trunks, paired with stiff, pointed tail feathers that brace it as it spirals up trees.
songbird
Eurasian Teal
The Old World form of the common teal, closely related to the North American Green-winged Teal, told apart chiefly by a horizontal white scapular stripe rather than a vertical flank stripe.
waterfowl
Eurasian Oystercatcher
A large, boldly pied shorebird of European and Asian coastlines, black above and white below, with a striking white wing bar and rump revealed in flight.
shorebird
Eurasian Curlew
Europe and Asia's largest curlew, with a long downcurved bill and streaky grayish-brown plumage, best known for its evocative bubbling call across moorlands and mudflats.
shorebird
Eurasian Blackbird
A familiar thrush of European gardens and woodland, with males entirely glossy black offset by a bright yellow-orange bill, while females are a more subdued dark brown.
songbird
Brown Noddy
A dark, tropical seabird related to terns, easily told by its uniform chocolate-brown plumage set off by a pale gray-white cap and a long, wedge-shaped tail.
seabird
American Crow
A large, all-black corvid found nearly continent-wide, whose sturdy glossy-black feathers with a slight iridescent sheen are among the most commonly found large feathers in North America.
corvid
Nightingale
The Nightingale is a plain brown songbird celebrated for its powerful, richly varied nighttime song, far more often heard than seen in dense thickets across Europe.
songbird
Bushtit
A tiny, drab, highly social western songbird whose plain gray-brown feathers and long slender tail relative to its round body make it easy to identify despite its lack of bold markings.
songbird
European Starling
An abundant introduced songbird whose feathers change appearance through wear alone, shifting from spotted in fresh winter plumage to glossy and unspotted by breeding season.
songbird
Eurasian Magpie
A boldly pied corvid whose black feathers flash iridescent blue-green and purple in the light, with an unmistakably long, wedge-shaped tail.
corvid
Greater Flamingo
The largest flamingo species, with pale pink body plumage that hides bold black flight feathers revealed only in flight.
wading bird
Atlantic Puffin
A small, tuxedo-patterned seabird famous for its large, brightly colored bill in the breeding season, spending most of the year far out at sea before returning to nest on coastal cliffs and islands.
seabird
Zone-tailed Hawk
A blackish hawk that closely mimics the flight silhouette and dark coloring of the Turkey Vulture, distinguished mainly by its banded tail feathers.
raptor
Ring-necked Pheasant
A large, long-tailed gamebird whose males carry some of the most vividly iridescent body feathers and dramatically elongated tail feathers of any bird found in open countryside.
gamebird