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.
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
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
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
Sun Conure
A vividly colored conure of northeastern South America, its golden-yellow and orange plumage set off by green-tipped wings and blue flight feathers.
parrot
Wattled Crane
The largest crane in Africa, a grey wading bird with a black cap, striking white feathers hanging from the throat, and long fleshy wattles dangling below the face.
wading bird
Mute Swan
An enormous, entirely white waterbird whose large, gently curved feathers are unmistakable simply by their sheer size among freshwater birds.
waterfowl
Mitred Conure
A largely green Andean conure marked by variable patches of red mottling around the face and eyes, along with scattered red feathering on the wings and legs.
parrot
Red Phalarope
The most oceanic of the phalaropes, the Red Phalarope shows brick-red underparts in breeding plumage and pale gray winter feathers, with a stouter bill than its phalarope relatives.
shorebird
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
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
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
Fox Sparrow
A large, richly colored sparrow whose reddish tail and heavily spotted breast make its feathers among the most distinctive of any North American sparrow.
songbird
Emu
Australia's largest bird, the Emu has loose, hair-like feathers that grow in pairs from a single shaft, giving its plumage a shaggy, fur-like texture unlike any flying bird.
other
Hawfinch
A bull-necked, massive-billed finch whose wing feathers include uniquely curved, hooked secondaries found in no other European songbird.
songbird
Grey Junglefowl
An Indian forest gamebird whose males have neck hackle feathers tipped with an unusual glassy, wax-like yellow spangle unlike any other bird.
gamebird
Green Junglefowl
An Indonesian junglefowl covered in glossy, scale-patterned green-black feathers, with a rounded, multicolored comb unlike any other junglefowl species.
gamebird
Green Bee-eater
A small, brilliantly green bee-eater found from Africa to South Asia, with a thin black eye stripe and a fine pin-like extension to its central tail feathers.
other
Chimney Swift
A cigar-shaped aerial bird with uniformly sooty gray-brown plumage and stiff, spine-tipped tail feathers used to brace against vertical surfaces.
other
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
Brown Fish Owl
A large brown fish-hunting owl of South and Southeast Asian waterways, streaked brown overall, with feathers and bare, bristly lower legs adapted for hunting at the water's edge.
owl
Booted Racket-tail
A tiny Andean hummingbird best known for its puffy white leg feathers and, in males, a pair of long bare tail shafts ending in small dark paddle-shaped tips.
hummingbird
Tawny Owl
A stocky woodland owl whose bark-patterned, silent-edged feathers make it one of the most cryptically camouflaged birds in the forest.
owl
Little Owl
A small, flat-headed owl whose boldly white-spotted brown feathers and habit of perching in daylight set it apart from Europe's other owls.
owl
Eurasian Blackcap
A plain grey-brown warbler whose crown feathers immediately reveal its sex: solid glossy black in males, warm reddish-brown in females and juveniles.
songbird