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.
Eurasian Pygmy-Owl
Europe's smallest owl, a boreal forest specialist that hunts small birds and rodents largely by day. Its feathers are gray-brown to rufous with crisp white spotting and a narrowly barred tail.
owl
Fernandina's Flicker
An uncommon Cuban endemic flicker with subtly barred brown plumage, found in palm savanna and adjacent open woodland.
woodpecker
Cabanis's Bunting
An African woodland bunting with a bold black-and-white striped head and chestnut-edged wings, found in miombo habitat.
songbird
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
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
A striking eastern songbird whose males show a bold black-and-white pattern set off by a triangular rose-red patch on the breast, one of the most distinctive feather patterns among North American songbirds.
songbird
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
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
Iberian Magpie
A pastel-toned corvid of the Iberian Peninsula, near-identical in plumage to its Asian relative but found only in Spain and Portugal.
corvid
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
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
Cedar Waxwing
A sleek, crested bird best known for the small, waxy red tips on its secondary wing feathers, paired with a soft brown-to-gray body and a bright yellow band across the tail tip.
songbird
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
Jungle Crow
A robust, all-black crow of the Indian subcontinent, closely related to the Large-billed Crow but generally found in more southerly regions.
corvid
Pied Oystercatcher
A bold black-and-white shorebird with a long orange-red bill, found probing sandy beaches and mudflats along the Australian coast.
shorebird
Cave Swallow
A close relative of Cliff Swallow with a paler, more orange-buff throat and forehead, typically found nesting in caves, culverts, and sinkholes.
songbird
White-tailed Ptarmigan
The smallest ptarmigan species and the only one with an all-white tail year-round, found on high alpine tundra of western North America.
gamebird
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
Pied Falconet
A strikingly pied falconet with clean black-and-white plumage and no rufous coloring at all, found across southern China and northern Southeast Asia.
raptor
Asian Koel
A vocal, sexually dimorphic cuckoo found across South and Southeast Asia, males glossy black and females brown with dense pale spotting.
other
Yellow-bellied Siskin
A tropical montane finch with a black head and back offset by warm yellow underparts, found in cloud-forest edges and clearings.
songbird
Nelson's Sparrow
A softly patterned marsh sparrow with a blurry orange face and grayish back streaking, found in both interior and coastal wetlands.
songbird
Large-billed Crow
A robust, all-black crow found widely across Asia, notable for its deep, arched bill and steep forehead.
corvid
Wood Sandpiper
A slim, finely spotted sandpiper with a pale eyebrow stripe and yellowish-green legs, often found at shallow freshwater pools.
shorebird