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 Tern
A distinctive marsh tern that turns almost entirely sooty-black during the breeding season, a striking departure from the pale gray-and-white pattern typical of most terns.
seabird
White-breasted Nuthatch
The White-breasted Nuthatch is a tree-climbing songbird whose clean blue-gray back and pure white face and breast feathers are easy to separate from most other backyard species.
songbird
Rufous-collared Robin
The Rufous-collared Robin is a highland thrush of Mexico and Guatemala, identified by its bright rufous-orange collar and breast band contrasting sharply against otherwise dark gray-black plumage.
songbird
Pink-footed Goose
A compact gray goose with a notably darker head and neck than its body, a short pink-banded bill, and pink legs, breeding in the far North Atlantic and wintering on European farmland.
waterfowl
House Sparrow
The House Sparrow is an introduced species whose males show a gray crown, chestnut nape and black throat bib over a streaked brown back, while females are plain buffy-brown.
songbird
King Eider
The King Eider is a large arctic sea duck whose male combines a colorful blue-gray and pale green head with a black body and white breast, topped by an orange bill shield.
waterfowl
Chinese Grosbeak
A medium-sized East Asian finch with a black head, gray-brown body, and a bright yellow bill tipped in black, smaller and more widespread than its relative the Japanese Grosbeak.
songbird
Cassin's Auklet
A small, drab, sooty-gray auklet lacking the bold facial ornaments of its relatives, most easily told by its stubby bill with a small pale spot near the tip.
seabird
Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl
A tiny, day-active owl of arid scrub and thorn forest across the Americas, often revealed by its bold rufous or gray-brown coloring and long, cocked, barred tail.
owl
Gang-gang Cockatoo
A small, distinctive Australian cockatoo, the Gang-gang shows scaly gray body plumage in both sexes, with males further marked by a bright red head and a wispy, curled crest.
parrot
African Harrier-Hawk
A distinctive gray African raptor known for its bare, color-changing facial skin and unusually flexible double-jointed legs, used to probe tree holes and nests for prey.
raptor
Sandhill Crane
A tall North American crane, gray overall but often stained rusty-brown from preening with iron-rich mud, famous for its massive migratory staging flocks and rolling bugle call.
wading bird
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 Pygmy-Owl
A tiny, fierce diurnal owl of western mountain forests, notable for the false 'eyespots' on the back of its head. Its feathers show heavy white spotting on a rufous or gray-brown ground color.
owl
Laysan Albatross
A North Pacific albatross with a clean white head and body contrasting against dark gray upperwings, distinguished from its dark-bodied Black-footed relative by its predominantly pale plumage.
seabird
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
American Robin
The American Robin is a familiar thrush whose warm orange breast feathers and plain gray-brown back feathers make it one of the easiest yard birds to identify from a single dropped feather.
songbird
South Polar Skua
A powerfully built Antarctic seabird closely resembling the Great Skua but often paler and grayer overall, ranging across some of the most remote polar and pelagic waters on Earth.
seabird
Secretarybird
A tall, long-legged raptor that hunts on foot across the African savanna, with pale gray body feathers, black flight and thigh feathers, and long black crest plumes at the back of the head.
raptor
Scaled Quail
A pale, scaly-plumaged quail of arid grassland in the southwestern United States and Mexico, easily recognized by its overall bluish-gray tone and a fluffy white crest sometimes called a cottontop.
gamebird
Varied Thrush
A strikingly patterned thrush of Pacific Northwest forests, combining a slate-gray back with burnt-orange underparts, eyebrow stripe, and wing bars, plus a bold dark breast band in males.
songbird
Purple Sandpiper
A stocky, dark-plumaged sandpiper of wave-battered rocky coastlines, its feathers showing a subtle purplish gloss on slaty-gray upperparts unlike any other North Atlantic shorebird.
shorebird
Flammulated Owl
A tiny, highly secretive migratory owl of western pine forests, camouflaged to match bark with a fine mottled gray-and-rufous pattern, and unusual among small owls for its dark eyes.
owl
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