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.
Clark's Nutcracker
A pale gray, crow-like bird of high mountain pine forests, best known for storing thousands of pine seeds each autumn to survive winter.
corvid
Common Rosefinch
A finch in which breeding males show a rosy-red head, breast, and rump, while females and immatures are plain streaked brown, sparrow-like birds.
songbird
Golden-headed Quetzal
A trogon-family bird of Andean cloud forests, the Golden-headed Quetzal shows brilliant metallic green plumage that shifts to golden tones in good light.
other
Sage Thrasher
The smallest and most compact North American thrasher, a streaky gray-brown bird of sagebrush country with a shorter, straighter bill than its relatives.
songbird
Shiny Cowbird
A slender, glossy blackbird relative widespread across South America and the Caribbean, notable for its uniform purplish-blue sheen and habit of parasitizing other birds' nests.
songbird
Red-billed Quelea
A small African weaver famous for forming the largest flocks of any wild bird, with breeding males sporting a bold black or white facial mask and a bright red bill.
songbird
Jabiru
The largest flying bird of the Americas, an enormous white stork with a bare black head and neck marked by a distinctive red collar at the base, found in wetlands from Mexico to Argentina.
wading bird
Greater Rhea
A large flightless ratite of South American grasslands, with soft, loose grayish-brown plumage and a long neck, related more to ostriches and emus than to typical flying birds.
other
Pacific Parrotlet
The Pacific Parrotlet is one of the smallest parrots, a compact green bird from western South America in which males show patches of blue on the wings and rump.
parrot
Little Auk
The smallest auk of the North Atlantic, a dumpy, tightly packed little bird with a black-and-white pattern and a stubby bill, breeding in immense colonies in the high Arctic.
seabird
Eastern Phoebe
A plain-plumaged flycatcher recognized more by its tail-wagging habit than bright colors, with grayish-brown feathers above and a faint yellow wash on white underparts.
songbird
Corn Bunting
The Corn Bunting is a large, stocky, and plainly streaked farmland bunting, with brown-and-buff feathers that lack the bright colors of its relatives but show a heavy, seed-cracking bill.
songbird
Booted Eagle
A small, buzzard-sized eagle occurring in two distinct color forms, both showing feathered legs down to the toes and pale patches at the base of the primaries in flight.
raptor
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
Demoiselle Crane
The smallest of the world's cranes, a blue-grey bird with a black head and breast set off by long, drooping white ear-tuft plumes trailing behind the eyes.
wading bird
Whooping Crane
The tallest bird in North America, a white crane with black wingtips visible in flight and a bare red crown, best known for its dramatic conservation recovery story.
wading bird
Sacred Ibis
A large white wading bird with a bare black head and curved black bill, historically significant in ancient Egyptian culture and common across African wetlands today.
wading bird
Abert's Towhee
Abert's Towhee is a warm buffy-brown desert bird tied closely to riparian mesquite thickets of the low desert Southwest, identified by its black face patch.
songbird
Egyptian Vulture
The smallest and most lightly built Old World vulture, with creamy-white body feathers, black flight feathers, and a distinctive wedge-shaped tail.
raptor
Spotted Towhee
The western counterpart to the Eastern Towhee, distinguished by bold white spots and streaks across the back and wing feathers layered over the same black-rufous-white color scheme.
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
Spotted Flycatcher
The Spotted Flycatcher is a plain grey-brown songbird best recognized by behavior rather than bold color, its subtly streaked feathers built for a life of short aerial sallies from an open perch.
songbird
Hoatzin
An unusual, primitive-looking bird of Amazonian and Orinoco wetlands, with a spiky rufous crest, bright blue bare facial skin, and reddish eyes, known for chicks with clawed wings used to climb.
other
Sarus Crane
The tallest of all flying birds, a pale grey Asian crane with a strikingly red bare head and upper neck, resident year-round across its wetland range.
wading bird