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.
Trumpeter Swan
The heaviest native North American bird and largest swan, entirely white with a solid black bill, sometimes showing a rust-stained head from iron-rich feeding grounds.
waterfowl
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
Ring-necked Duck
A medium diving duck with a peaked head shape and a glossy black back, best distinguished from scaup by a white vertical spur at the base of the wing rather than a grey back.
waterfowl
European Goldfinch
A strikingly patterned finch with a red face, black-and-white head markings, warm buff-brown body, and a vivid golden-yellow wing bar crossing otherwise black wings.
songbird
Common Shelduck
A boldly patterned, goose-sized duck with a crisp white body, a glossy dark green head, a broad chestnut band across the breast and back, and solid black flight feathers.
waterfowl
Gadwall
A subtly patterned grey dabbling duck best known for a crisp white speculum patch and, in males, a bold black rear end, both visible even on a single found feather.
waterfowl
Canada Goose
A large, familiar goose whose black neck feathers set off by a bold white chinstrap patch make it one of the easiest waterfowl to recognize from a single feather cluster.
waterfowl
Brown Noddy
A dark, tropical seabird related to terns, easily told by its uniform chocolate-brown plumage set off by a pale gray-white cap and a long, wedge-shaped tail.
seabird
Brambling
A northern finch closely related to the Chaffinch, showing warm orange breast and shoulder feathers, a mottled black-and-orange back, and a bold white rump patch that flashes distinctively in flight.
songbird
Booted Racket-tail
A tiny Andean hummingbird best known for its puffy white leg feathers and, in males, a pair of long bare tail shafts ending in small dark paddle-shaped tips.
hummingbird
Blue-winged Teal
A small, long-distance migrant dabbling duck with a pale blue wing patch shared by both sexes, and males showing a bold white facial crescent on a slate-grey head.
waterfowl
Black Scoter
The Black Scoter is the only scoter whose breeding male shows an entirely black plumage with no white markings at all, set off by a bright orange-yellow knob at the base of the bill.
waterfowl
Black-headed Gull
A small, gregarious Old World gull whose chocolate-brown (not black) hood and white leading-edge wing wedge make it easy to pick out from mixed flocks.
seabird
Black-capped Chickadee
The Black-capped Chickadee is a tiny, non-migratory songbird whose soft black-and-white head feathers and plain gray back make it a familiar year-round feeder visitor.
songbird
Bat Falcon
The Bat Falcon is a small, dashing falcon of Neotropical forests, black above with a rufous throat patch and a boldly black-and-white barred belly, often hunting bats and swifts at dusk.
raptor
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
Greater Spotted Eagle
A dark, wetland-loving eagle of boreal and eastern Eurasian forests, larger and blacker than its close relative the Lesser Spotted Eagle, with juveniles showing a striking frosted pattern of white wing spots.
raptor
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
American Herring Gull
The North American counterpart to the Eurasian Herring Gull, the American Herring Gull shows very similar pale gray-and-white plumage with black wingtip spots, but with subtly darker gray tones and pinkish legs.
seabird
Tui
The Tui is a New Zealand honeyeater whose plumage looks black at a distance but shimmers with iridescent green, blue, and bronze up close, set off by two curled white throat tufts.
songbird
Martial Eagle
The Martial Eagle is Africa's largest eagle, with dark grey-brown upperparts, a white underside heavily spotted with brown-black, and immense broad wings built for powerful soaring over savanna.
raptor
Long-tailed Tit
A tiny, round-bodied tit with an extraordinarily long tail exceeding its body length, patterned in black, white, and soft dusky pink, among the most distinctive silhouettes in European woodland.
songbird
King Eider
The King Eider is a large arctic sea duck whose male combines a colorful blue-gray and pale green head with a black body and white breast, topped by an orange bill shield.
waterfowl
Scarlet Ibis
A brilliantly colored South American and Caribbean ibis, entirely vivid scarlet-red apart from black wingtips, closely related to the American White Ibis but far more vividly pigmented.
wading bird