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.
Whooping Crane
The tallest bird in North America, an endangered white crane with black wingtips visible in flight and a bare red crown, best known for its dramatic conservation recovery story.
wading bird
Red-tailed Hawk
The Red-tailed Hawk is a widespread North American buteo best known for its brick-red adult tail, pale underparts with a dark belly band, and broad, rounded wings often seen soaring over open country and roadsides.
raptor
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
Northern Bobwhite
A small, well-known quail of eastern and central North America, named for its whistled call, with males showing a bold white throat and eyebrow stripe against a reddish-brown, barred body.
gamebird
Franklin's Gull
A small, elegant gull of interior prairie wetlands, known for its bold white eye crescents, black hood, and one of the longest migrations of any gull, wintering as far south as the coasts of South America.
seabird
Yellow-rumped Warbler
One of North America's most abundant warblers, easily known by small bright-yellow patches on the rump, sides, and crown set against streaky gray-brown feathers.
songbird
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.
owl
White-throated Thrush
The White-throated Thrush is a widespread Central and South American forest thrush, identified by its plain olive-brown body and a contrasting white throat marked with dark streaking.
songbird
Northern Long-eared Owl
The Northern Long-eared Owl is the North American form of the Long-eared Owl, a slender, cryptically patterned owl with long, closely-set ear tufts that roosts communally in dense conifers.
owl
Black-necked Stork
A tall, striking stork of India and Australia with a glossy iridescent black head and neck, a white body, and bold black-and-white wings, sometimes locally called the Jabiru despite being unrelated to the true American species.
wading bird
Brown Wood Owl
The Brown Wood Owl is a large, dark forest owl of South and Southeast Asia known for its rich chocolate-brown plumage and heavily barred underparts.
owl
Rufous Woodpecker
An unusually uniform rufous-brown woodpecker of South and Southeast Asia, best known for nesting inside the arboreal nests of tree ants.
woodpecker
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
Cerulean Warbler
One of the smallest wood-warblers, with sky-blue upperparts in the male, breeding high in mature deciduous forest canopy of eastern North America.
songbird
Bonaparte's Gull
A dainty, tern-like gull of the North American boreal forest, notable as one of the few gulls that nests in trees, and identifiable by its crisp black hood and bright white wing wedge.
seabird
Whistling Kite
A common, pale kite of Australia and New Guinea best known for its far-carrying whistled call, with buff-brown body feathers contrasting against darker flight feathers in flight.
raptor
Snowy-browed Owl
This tiny Asian pygmy owl is known for its compact, heavily spotted brown plumage and a pair of dark false eye-spots on the nape that help confuse predators.
owl
Scaled Dove
A small South American dove whose breast and neck feathers carry dark, crescent-shaped edges that overlap like fish scales.
dove pigeon
New Zealand Pigeon
A large, glossy New Zealand pigeon known as the kereru, its head and back gleaming with iridescent green, bronze, and purple set sharply against a clean white belly.
dove pigeon
Puerto Rican Screech-Owl
The Puerto Rican Screech-Owl, locally known as the mucaro, is a small island-endemic owl with soft reddish-brown or grey-brown plumage and a rounded, nearly tuftless head.
owl
Pacific Golden-Plover
A slender, long-legged golden plover breeding on Siberian and Alaskan tundra and wintering widely across Pacific islands and coastal Asia, closely resembling the American Golden-Plover.
shorebird
Abdim's Stork
The smallest of the true storks, a compact African species with glossy black-and-white plumage, often associated locally with the arrival of seasonal rains and known for traveling in large flocks.
wading bird
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
The only breeding hummingbird across most of eastern North America, males carry a brilliant iridescent red throat patch that can flash black in poor light, set against emerald-green upperparts.
hummingbird
Temminck's Tragopan
A vividly colored Asian pheasant with rich orange-red plumage dotted in pearly white spots, best known for the male's inflatable blue throat lappet used in courtship display.
gamebird