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.
Common Redstart
The Common Redstart is a small songbird named for its bright rufous-red tail feathers, which it constantly quivers, contrasting with a slate-grey back and black face in breeding males.
songbird
Common Kingfisher
A small, jewel-like bird whose brilliant structurally iridescent blue back feathers and warm orange underparts make it one of the most vividly colored birds along any river.
other
Common Whitethroat
A small, active warbler with a bright white throat contrasting a grey head, and warm chestnut fringes on the wing feathers that add color to an otherwise modest bird.
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
Common Buzzard
The Common Buzzard is a medium-large soaring raptor with broad, fingered wing feathers and a highly variable brown plumage, ranging from very dark to pale, that makes each individual's feathers somewhat distinct.
raptor
Common Kestrel
The Common Kestrel is a small falcon best known for its ability to hover in place while hunting, with long pointed wings and a distinctive tail that is blue-grey with a black band in males but barred rufous-brown in females.
raptor
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
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
Short-toed Treecreeper
The Short-toed Treecreeper is a small, bark-colored woodland bird that spirals up tree trunks probing for insects, its mottled brown plumage providing near-perfect camouflage against bark.
songbird
Black-bellied Plover
The largest and most widespread of the golden-plover group, told from true golden-plovers by white-and-black (not golden) upperpart spangling and diagnostic black underwing feathers.
shorebird
Dodo
A large, flightless pigeon relative once native to Mauritius, known for its stout grey-brown body, oversized hooked bill, and small, curled tuft of tail feathers; it has been extinct since the late 1600s.
dove pigeon
Tufted Titmouse
The Tufted Titmouse is a common eastern woodland bird known for its jaunty gray crest feathers and soft, plain-gray body feathers washed with rust along the flanks.
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
Ring-billed Gull
A common, adaptable medium-sized gull of North America named for the black band around its bill, the Ring-billed Gull shows pale gray back feathers and yellow legs, thriving in habitats from lakeshores to parking lots.
seabird
Great Kiskadee
A large, boldly patterned flycatcher named for its loud, ringing call, with a black-and-white striped head, sulfur-yellow underparts, and rufous edging on the wings and tail. It is a common and conspicuous bird from Texas to Argentina.
songbird
Speckled Chachalaca
A grayish-brown, chicken-like bird of South American forest edges, marked with fine pale speckling on the breast and a long tail broadly tipped in cinnamon. It is best known for its loud, raucous dawn calls that give the chachalaca its name.
gamebird
House Finch
The House Finch is a common feeder finch whose male feathers show a diet-dependent red-to-orange wash on the head and breast over a brown-streaked body, while females are plain streaked brown.
songbird
Pygmy Nuthatch
The Pygmy Nuthatch is a tiny, highly social western pine-forest nuthatch whose dull gray-brown cap and small feather size distinguish it from other nuthatches.
songbird
Black Kite
The Black Kite is a widespread Old World raptor with dull dark brown plumage, a slightly forked tail, and finely barred flight feathers, notable for its adaptability to human-altered landscapes including cities and rubbish sites.
raptor
Firecrest
The Firecrest is one of Europe's smallest songbirds, a mite of a bird whose soft, downy contour feathers are topped with a blazing orange-and-black crown stripe unlike any similarly sized species.
songbird
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