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.
Grey Butcherbird
A boldly patterned Australian songbird, the Grey Butcherbird shows gray upperparts, a black head marking, and clean white underparts, paired with a strong, hooked bill used to catch and impale prey.
songbird
Northern Cardinal
The Northern Cardinal is a stocky, crested songbird whose males shed brilliant all-red feathers while females drop more subdued brown feathers tinged with red on the wings, tail and crest.
songbird
Eurasian Jay
A shy woodland corvid best known for its brilliant sky-blue, black-barred wing covert feathers — among the most eye-catching and easily recognized feathers found in temperate woodland.
corvid
Goliath Heron
The world's largest heron, an imposing bird with a massive bill and rich chestnut head and neck feathering.
wading bird
Temminck's Stint
A small, plain-plumaged stint that favors quiet freshwater edges over open mudflats, distinguished from its rufous relatives by generally duller upperpart feathers and distinctive white outer tail feathers.
shorebird
Vesper Sparrow
A streaky grassland sparrow best identified by white outer tail feathers and a small chestnut shoulder patch.
songbird
Beavan's Bullfinch
A compact, orange-breasted bullfinch of Himalayan and Chinese mountain forests, easily told by its gray cap and bold pale wing bar.
songbird
Grey-headed Woodpecker
A quieter, grayer relative of the Green Woodpecker found across the forests of Europe and Asia, told by its grey head and much smaller red cap.
woodpecker
Red-legged Partridge
A plump, ground-dwelling gamebird whose boldly barred flank feathers in black, white, and chestnut are unmistakable at close range.
gamebird
Crested Guineafowl
A forest-dwelling guineafowl topped with a distinctive curly, black feather crest instead of the bony casque of its savanna relatives.
gamebird
Australian Raven
A large, widespread Australian raven known for long, shaggy throat hackle feathers and a distinctive mournful, drawn-out call.
corvid
Green Sandpiper
A dark, almost blackish sandpiper with a contrasting white rump and blackish underwing, often flushed abruptly from small secluded pools.
shorebird
Mute Swan
An enormous, entirely white waterbird whose large, gently curved feathers are unmistakable simply by their sheer size among freshwater birds.
waterfowl
Pomarine Jaeger
The largest and bulkiest of the jaegers, recognized in breeding adults by broad, spoon-twisted central tail feathers and heavily barred underwing coverts.
seabird
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
Chihuahuan Raven
A desert raven of the American Southwest, smaller than the Common Raven, with hidden white feather bases at the neck.
corvid
Great Grey Shrike
A pale gray Eurasian predator songbird with a black mask and long tail, often seen perched conspicuously atop bushes or wires while watching for prey.
songbird
Rufous-legged Owl
The Rufous-legged Owl is a temperate-forest owl of Chile and Argentina named for the warm rufous feathering that covers its legs down to the toes.
owl
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
Hawfinch
A bull-necked, massive-billed finch whose wing feathers include uniquely curved, hooked secondaries found in no other European songbird.
songbird
Green Junglefowl
An Indonesian junglefowl covered in glossy, scale-patterned green-black feathers, with a rounded, multicolored comb unlike any other junglefowl species.
gamebird
Brown Kiwi
A flightless, nocturnal New Zealand bird with shaggy, hair-like feathers and a long probing bill used to find invertebrates in leaf litter.
other
Black-headed Mountain Finch
A high-altitude finch of the Himalayas and Central Asian ranges, known for its blackish head and body offset by rosy-pink wing feathers.
songbird
Ring Ouzel
A blackbird relative of upland Europe, told from the Eurasian Blackbird by its bold white crescent across the breast and pale-scaled wing feathers.
songbird