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.
Eastern Bluebird
A small, vividly colored thrush whose blue feathers are produced by feather structure rather than pigment, giving them a shifting brightness depending on the angle of light.
songbird
Blue-winged Kookaburra
A northern relative of the Laughing Kookaburra, distinguished by more extensive blue in the wings and a harsher, less musical call.
other
European Robin
An iconic garden songbird with a vivid orange-red face and breast set against olive-brown upperparts, one of the most recognizable feather patterns in European gardens.
songbird
Mallard
The world's most familiar duck, identifiable from almost any single wing feather by its glossy blue speculum bordered in white, shared by both sexes.
waterfowl
Tristram's Bunting
An East Asian bunting with a bold black-and-white striped head and a chestnut breast band, breeding in northern forests.
songbird
Red-crowned Woodpecker
A small, widespread woodpecker of northern South America with a barred black-and-white back and a bright red crown on males.
woodpecker
Magnolia Warbler
A small, boldly patterned wood-warbler with a black "necklace" of streaking on a yellow breast, breeding in northern conifer forests.
songbird
Willow Warbler
A tiny, long-distance migrant warbler nearly identical to the Chiffchaff, best separated at the feather level by slightly yellower tones and pale pinkish (rather than dark) legs.
songbird
Pygmy Nuthatch
The Pygmy Nuthatch is a tiny, highly social western pine-forest nuthatch whose dull gray-brown cap and small feather size distinguish it from other nuthatches.
songbird
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
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
Rook
A glossy, all-black farmland corvid recognized in life by its bare greyish face skin and shaggy thigh feathering, and in feather form by its strong purple-blue sheen.
corvid
Wood Thrush
A woodland thrush with a warm rufous-brown back brightest on the head, and a boldly spotted white breast that gives it one of the most striking feather patterns among eastern forest songbirds.
songbird
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
Golden Eagle
A powerful upland raptor whose dark brown plumage and golden nape feathers give it its name, with young birds showing crisp white flight-feather patches that fade with age.
raptor
Torresian Crow
A widespread crow of northern Australia and New Guinea, larger and more heavily built than the closely related Little Crow.
corvid
Black Woodpecker
The largest woodpecker across most of Europe and northern Asia, entirely black except for a red crown patch and a pale bill.
woodpecker
Hoary Redpoll
A pale, frosty-looking northern finch closely related to the Common Redpoll, breeding at even higher latitudes across the Arctic.
songbird
Black-throated Green Warbler
A small wood-warbler with a bright yellow face framed by an olive-green crown and a black throat, breeding in northern conifer forests.
songbird
American Robin
The American Robin is a familiar thrush whose warm orange breast feathers and plain gray-brown back feathers make it one of the easiest yard birds to identify from a single dropped feather.
songbird
Pied Falconet
A strikingly pied falconet with clean black-and-white plumage and no rufous coloring at all, found across southern China and northern Southeast Asia.
raptor
Palm Warbler
A ground-foraging wood-warbler with a rufous cap in breeding plumage and constant tail-bobbing, breeding in northern bogs and wintering in the southeastern US.
songbird
Rock Pigeon
A stocky, familiar city bird whose feather color is famously variable, though wild-type individuals retain a blue-gray body with two dark wingbars and an iridescent green-purple neck.
dove pigeon
Goldcrest
Europe's smallest bird, identifiable even from a single tiny feather by its vivid black-bordered crown stripe — orange in males, yellow in females — set against olive-green plumage.
songbird