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.
Australian Raven
A large, widespread Australian raven known for long, shaggy throat hackle feathers and a distinctive mournful, drawn-out call.
corvid
Great Egret
A tall, all-white heron with a long yellow bill and black legs, famous for the delicate plumes it grows during the breeding season.
wading bird
Palm-nut Vulture
An unusual, mostly white African vulture closely tied to oil palm groves and coastal wetlands, with black flight feathers and a partly black tail breaking up its pale plumage.
raptor
Blue Jay
The Blue Jay is a large, vocal corvid whose bold blue, black-barred, white-tipped wing and tail feathers are among the most instantly recognizable of any North American songbird.
corvid
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
Crested Serpent Eagle
A forest raptor of South and Southeast Asia with bare yellow facial skin and a bushy nape crest, best identified by its single broad white tail band and white-spotted underparts.
raptor
Green Hermit
A large green hermit hummingbird found in forest understory from Central America to northern South America, marked by its long decurved bill and elongated white-tipped tail streamer.
hummingbird
Black-chested Buzzard-Eagle
A massive, broad-winged raptor of the Andes and southern grasslands, recognized by its silvery flight feathers, short wedge tail, and sharply contrasting black chest patch against a white belly.
raptor
Bearded Vulture
A striking mountain vulture with long narrow wings, a long wedge-shaped tail, and underparts that range from creamy white to rich rusty-orange, often stained by iron-rich soil.
raptor
Passenger Pigeon
Once among the most numerous birds in North America, the Passenger Pigeon was a slender, fast-flying species with a long pointed tail and iridescent neck patch, driven to extinction by the early 1900s.
dove pigeon
Upland Sandpiper
A grassland shorebird with a small head, long neck, and long tail, the Upland Sandpiper shows richly patterned buffy-brown feathers with dark barring and a scaled look, entirely adapted to life away from water.
shorebird
Honey Buzzard
The Honey Buzzard is a highly variable Eurasian raptor specialized in raiding wasp and bee nests, recognizable by its small, pigeon-like head, dense scale-like facial feathers for protection, and boldly banded tail.
raptor
Aztec Thrush
The Aztec Thrush is a boldly patterned montane thrush of Mexican cloud forest, marked by striking white wing patches and white-tipped tail feathers against dark brown-black body plumage.
songbird
Albert's Lyrebird
A rarer relative of the Superb Lyrebird found only in a small area of eastern Australia, Albert's Lyrebird has a more subdued rufous-brown plumage and a less elaborate but still distinctive ornamental tail.
songbird
Short-toed Snake Eagle
The Short-toed Snake Eagle is a pale-bellied Eurasian eagle with brown upperparts, a mottled brown breast, finely barred flight and tail feathers, and a large owl-like head adapted for scanning the ground for reptile prey.
raptor
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
Sage Grouse
The largest North American grouse, tied closely to sagebrush habitat, with mottled grey-brown plumage, a black belly patch, and long, spiky pointed tail feathers fanned during elaborate lek displays.
gamebird
Russet-backed Oropendola
A large, colonial oropendola of South American forests, olive-brown overall with a warm russet back and bright yellow outer tail feathers, best known for its hanging woven nests and gurgling song.
songbird
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
Northern Wheatear
The Northern Wheatear is an open-country songbird best known for its bold white rump and black-and-white tail pattern, flashed conspicuously in flight above blue-grey or buff-brown body plumage.
songbird
Marvelous Spatuletail
An extremely rare Peruvian hummingbird whose male carries just four tail feathers, two of them reduced to long bare wires tipped with glossy violet-blue paddles that cross during display.
hummingbird
Malachite Sunbird
A large African sunbird whose breeding males are covered in brilliant iridescent green plumage with long tail streamers, while females and non-breeding males show a much plainer, brownish, streaked appearance.
songbird
Eurasian Siskin
A small, active finch of conifer and alder woodland, with males showing a black cap on a yellow-green head and both sexes displaying bold black-and-yellow wing bars and a forked tail with yellow at the base.
songbird
Great Spotted Woodpecker
The Great Spotted Woodpecker is a striking black-and-white bird with bold white wing patches, a crimson undertail, and stiff, pointed tail feathers adapted for bracing against tree trunks while excavating and drumming.
woodpecker