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.
Great Horned Owl
One of the most widespread and powerful owls in the Americas, instantly recognizable by its prominent ear tufts and richly mottled brown plumage built for silent, nocturnal flight.
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Great Grey Owl
The longest owl in the world by overall length, cloaked in soft grey, finely mottled plumage and famous for its huge facial disc marked with distinct concentric rings.
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Barred Owl
A large, round-headed owl of eastern North American forests, known for its dark eyes and the distinctive combination of horizontal chest barring and vertical belly streaking on its plumage.
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Laughing Owl
An extinct New Zealand owl known for its odd, laughter-like call, with soft brown mottled plumage and a paler facial area; now known only from museum specimens.
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Barking Owl
An Australian hawk-owl named for its dog-like barking call, gray-brown above and heavily streaked below, favoring open woodland and riverine forest.
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African Wood Owl
A medium-sized African forest owl without ear tufts, dark brown with white spotting above and boldly barred brown and white below, well known for its distinctive laughing duet call.
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Eurasian Scops Owl
The Eurasian Scops Owl is a small, migratory owl of southern Europe and parts of Asia, known for its cryptic bark-patterned plumage and a monotonous, far-carrying whistled call.
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Whiskered Screech-Owl
A small screech-owl of montane oak and pine-oak woodlands from the southwestern United States into Central America, nearly identical in plumage to its relatives but distinguished chiefly by its distinctive irregular call.
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Morepork
New Zealand's small native owl, named for its call and known to Maori as ruru, with dark brown feathers mottled with pale buff spotting and streaked underparts.
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Southern Boobook
Australia's most familiar and widespread owl, named for its distinctive 'boo-book' call, with dark brown feathers boldly spotted white above and streaked buff below.
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Collared Forest Falcon
A large, owl-faced Neotropical forest raptor with short rounded wings and a long barred tail, known for a dark neck collar and loud calls echoing through the forest at dawn and dusk.
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Northern Harrier
The Northern Harrier, sometimes called the Marsh Hawk, is a slim, long-winged raptor of open grassland and marsh, known for its low, tilting flight, a distinctive white rump patch in all plumages, and an owl-like facial disc that helps it hear prey in the grass.
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Brown Hawk-Owl
The Brown Hawk-Owl is a widespread Asian owl with a hawk-like, tuftless head, dark brown upperparts, and rufous-streaked white underparts.
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Indian Scops Owl
The Indian Scops Owl is a small, grey-brown owl of the Indian subcontinent whose finely mottled, bark-like feathers help it disappear against tree trunks by day.
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Spectacled Owl
A large Neotropical rainforest owl named for its bold white 'spectacle' markings around the eyes, with a dark chocolate-brown hood and chest band contrasting sharply against a warm buffy-yellow belly.
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Papuan Hawk-Owl
A little-known, long-tailed forest owl endemic to New Guinea, with a hawk-like reduced facial disc and boldly barred underparts.
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Eurasian Woodcock
The larger Eurasian relative of the American Woodcock, sharing the same dead-leaf camouflage pattern and forest-floor lifestyle, but with a grayer overall tone and a distinctive slow, owl-like display flight known as roding.
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Northern Hawk-Owl
A falcon-like, day-hunting owl of the boreal forest, with a long tail, pointed wings, and boldly barred underparts, often seen perched conspicuously atop treetops scanning for prey.
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Short-toed Snake Eagle
The Short-toed Snake Eagle is a pale-bellied Eurasian eagle with brown upperparts, a mottled brown breast, finely barred flight and tail feathers, and a large owl-like head adapted for scanning the ground for reptile prey.
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Short-eared Owl
A wide-ranging owl of open grassland and marsh, notable for hunting in daylight on buoyant, moth-like wingbeats, with streaked buffy-brown plumage and ear tufts so small they are rarely visible.
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