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.
Juniper Titmouse
The Juniper Titmouse is a plain gray, crested songbird of the arid pinyon-juniper woodlands of the interior West, notable for its unmarked plumage and persistent, repetitive song.
songbird
Ivory-billed Woodpecker
An extremely large, historically iconic woodpecker of southeastern US bottomland forest, now exceedingly rare, recognized by its bold white wing patches and ivory-colored bill.
woodpecker
Dodo
A large, flightless pigeon relative once native to Mauritius, known for its stout grey-brown body, oversized hooked bill, and small, curled tuft of tail feathers; it has been extinct since the late 1600s.
dove pigeon
Helmeted Hornbill
The Helmeted Hornbill is a large, distinctive Southeast Asian rainforest bird best known for its solid casque and greatly elongated central tail feathers, which extend far beyond the rest of the tail. Its dark body plumage contrasts with white leg feathers and a long, banded tail.
other
Northern Grey-headed Woodpecker
A West and Central African woodpecker with a grey head contrasting against an olive-green back, part of a wider grey-headed woodpecker complex found across the continent.
woodpecker
Grey-capped Pygmy Woodpecker
A small, widespread Asian woodpecker with a grey-brown crown and crisply barred back, closely resembling other pygmy woodpeckers across its broad range.
woodpecker
Long-billed Curlew
North America's largest shorebird, the Long-billed Curlew shows warm cinnamon-buff plumage and an extraordinarily long, downcurved bill, with feathers that echo the buffy tones of dry grassland.
shorebird
Eastern Whipbird
The Eastern Whipbird is a skulking, olive-green Australian songbird best known for its explosive, whip-crack call rather than for being easily seen.
songbird
Black-bellied Plover
The largest and most widespread of the golden-plover group, told from true golden-plovers by white-and-black (not golden) upperpart spangling and diagnostic black underwing feathers.
shorebird
Red-billed Streamertail
Jamaica's national bird, the Red-billed Streamertail is famed for the male's extraordinarily long, curved tail feathers that produce a humming sound in flight.
hummingbird
Beavan's Bullfinch
A compact, orange-breasted bullfinch of Himalayan and Chinese mountain forests, easily told by its gray cap and bold pale wing bar.
songbird
Mexican Jay
A blue-and-grey jay of oak and pine-oak canyons in the southwestern US and Mexico, distinguished from similar scrub-jays by its plain grey underparts without a breast band.
corvid
Oriental Magpie-Robin
A familiar garden songbird of South and Southeast Asia, glossy black and white with a long tail it habitually holds cocked upward, known for its rich, musical song.
songbird
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
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
Magnificent Frigatebird
A large, aerial seabird with long angular wings and a deeply forked tail, glossy black in males and marked with a white breast patch in females.
seabird
Tufted Titmouse
The Tufted Titmouse is a common eastern woodland bird known for its jaunty gray crest feathers and soft, plain-gray body feathers washed with rust along the flanks.
songbird
Canada Jay
A famously tame, fluffy grey jay of the North American boreal forest, known for boldly approaching campers and caching food for winter survival.
corvid
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
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
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
Chimney Swift
A cigar-shaped aerial bird with uniformly sooty gray-brown plumage and stiff, spine-tipped tail feathers used to brace against vertical surfaces.
other
Dark-eyed Junco
A familiar winter feeder bird, the Dark-eyed Junco flashes bright white outer tail feathers against a slate-gray or brown body when it flies.
songbird
Snail Kite
A marsh-dwelling raptor with a thin, deeply curved bill for extracting apple snails, and feathers ranging from slaty gray in males to warm streaked brown in females and young birds.
raptor