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.
Western Sandpiper
A tiny sandpiper with black legs and a long, slightly drooped bill, showing rufous highlights on the crown and scapulars in breeding plumage.
shorebird
Spotless Starling
A glossy black starling of Iberia and northwest Africa closely resembling the Common Starling but lacking the pale spangling in breeding plumage.
songbird
Rufous-crowned Sparrow
A plain gray-breasted sparrow of rocky, brushy hillsides, identified by its rufous crown and a bold black malar stripe.
songbird
Rock Partridge
A mountain partridge of the Alps and Balkans, near-identical in plumage to the Chukar, with a black gorget stripe and bold chestnut-barred flanks.
gamebird
Rainbow Bee-eater
Australia's only bee-eater, a multicolored bird combining green, gold, and turquoise plumage with a fine black tail streamer.
other
Loggerhead Shrike
A compact gray predator songbird with a black bandit mask and a hooked bill, known for impaling prey on thorns and barbed wire.
songbird
Little Egret
A dainty white heron of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, best known for its black legs and bright yellow feet.
wading bird
Lawrence's Goldfinch
A small California and Baja California finch, gray-bodied with a black face on males and bright yellow wing and rump patches.
songbird
Common Redpoll
A small, hardy northern finch with a red cap and black chin, known for irruptive winter movements into temperate regions at feeders.
songbird
Crested Guineafowl
A forest-dwelling guineafowl topped with a distinctive curly, black feather crest instead of the bony casque of its savanna relatives.
gamebird
Antillean Siskin
A small island finch restricted to the mountains of Hispaniola, showing a black head and back set against bright yellow underparts.
songbird
Sabine's Gull
A strikingly patterned Arctic-breeding gull whose bold black, white, and gray tricolored wing pattern and forked tail make it one of the most distinctive gulls in flight.
seabird
Rustic Bunting
The Rustic Bunting is a boreal-forest bunting with breeding males showing a bold black-and-white head pattern set against rufous-streaked upperparts and a rufous breast band.
songbird
Royal Tern
One of the largest terns, approaching gull-like proportions, with a heavy orange bill and a shaggy black crest that is often reduced to a ragged crown patch outside the breeding season.
seabird
Rock Ptarmigan
A circumpolar tundra grouse that turns from mottled gray-brown in summer to pure white in winter, always retaining black tail feathers as a year-round field mark.
gamebird
Rock Dove
The wild ancestor of the familiar city pigeon, typically blue-grey with bold black wing bars and a white rump, though feral descendants show enormous color variation.
dove pigeon
Whiskered Tern
A compact marsh tern that turns a striking dark slate-gray across the body in breeding plumage, with a crisp white stripe dividing the black cap from the gray cheek.
seabird
Syrian Woodpecker
A close look-alike of the Great Spotted Woodpecker found across southeastern Europe and the Middle East, best separated by an incomplete black neck bar and a paler pink vent.
woodpecker
Swallow-tailed Kite
A graceful, boldly two-toned raptor with a deeply forked tail, whose sharp black-and-white feathers are unlike almost any other North American bird of prey.
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
Red-faced Warbler
A gray-backed, high-mountain warbler with a strikingly bright red face and throat set off by a black crown and nape, unlike any other North American warbler.
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
Razorbill
A sleek, glossy black-and-white auk named for its deep, laterally flattened bill marked with a bold white vertical line, closely related to the extinct Great Auk.
seabird
Mountain Caracara
A bold, high-altitude Andean raptor with black upperparts and breast set against a clean white belly and rump, often seen scavenging near mountain settlements and livestock.
raptor