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.
Common Swift
The Common Swift is an almost entirely aerial bird with long, scythe-like flight feathers and uniformly sooty-brown plumage, built for a life spent on the wing far more than any songbird.
other
Glaucous Gull
A massive, pale Arctic gull, the Glaucous Gull is unusual among large gulls for lacking black wingtips entirely, showing instead uniformly pale gray and white feathers well suited to its icy northern range.
seabird
Steppe Eagle
The Steppe Eagle is a large, uniformly dark brown Eurasian eagle of open grassland, with long fingered wingtips and fully feathered legs. Its flight feathers show subtle grey barring underneath, and juveniles display a pale band across the underwing.
raptor
Morepork
New Zealand's small native owl, named for its call and known to Maori as ruru, with dark brown feathers mottled with pale buff spotting and streaked underparts.
owl
Common Starling
A glossy, iridescent songbird whose feathers shift from heavily spangled with pale spots in fresh winter plumage to sleek and nearly spot-free by the breeding season.
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
Evening Grosbeak
A large, boldly patterned finch of northern and montane conifer forests, males showing a striking combination of black, bright yellow, and white feathers along with an oversized pale bill.
songbird
Red Phalarope
The most oceanic of the phalaropes, the Red Phalarope shows brick-red underparts in breeding plumage and pale gray winter feathers, with a stouter bill than its phalarope relatives.
shorebird
Verreaux's Eagle-Owl
Africa's largest owl, a pale gray giant of savanna and riverine woodland, instantly recognizable in life by its bare pink eyelids, with correspondingly oversized, finely patterned feathers.
owl
Wilson's Phalarope
A slim, needle-billed shorebird of prairie wetlands, Wilson's Phalarope shows a striking chestnut neck stripe in breeding plumage and plain gray-and-white feathers otherwise, unusual among birds for its reversed sexual dichromatism.
shorebird
Southern Cassowary
A large, flightless rainforest bird, the Southern Cassowary has coarse, hair-like black plumage and a tall bony head casque, with its vivid blue-and-red coloring confined to bare skin rather than feathers.
other
Marsh Tit
A plain-plumaged woodland tit with a small, neat glossy black cap and bib set against pale buff-brown body feathers, with plain wings lacking any wingbar.
songbird
Swainson's Hawk
Swainson's Hawk is a long-winged buteo of open grassland and prairie, typically showing a dark breast bib, paler belly, and notably dark flight feathers contrasting against paler underwing coverts, distinct from the broader-winged buteos it shares range with.
raptor
Crested Oropendola
A large, glossy black oropendola with a bright yellow tail, a pale ivory bill, and a small feathered crest, widespread across lowland forests of South America.
songbird
Inca Dove
A small, pale dove with an overall scaly appearance created by dark-edged feathers, common around towns and arid scrub of the southwestern United States and Mexico.
dove pigeon
Hume's Owl
Hume's Owl is a pale, desert-adapted tawny owl of the Middle East whose sandy, finely barred feathers blend seamlessly with rock and canyon walls.
owl
Ferruginous Hawk
The Ferruginous Hawk is the largest North American buteo, with rich rufous ('ferruginous') back and leg feathers, a pale head and underparts, and a whitish tail, adapted to hunting over open, arid grassland.
raptor
White-tailed Eagle
A massive coastal eagle whose short, white, wedge-shaped tail feathers and pale straw head contrast strongly with dark brown body plumage in adults.
raptor
Booted Eagle
A small, buzzard-sized eagle occurring in two distinct color forms, both showing feathered legs down to the toes and pale patches at the base of the primaries in flight.
raptor
Mottled Owl
A medium-sized, ear-tuftless wood owl of Neotropical forest, its feathers finely mottled in dark and pale brown, with whitish eyebrows and buffy, streaked underparts.
owl
Eurasian Wigeon
The Old World counterpart to the American Wigeon, with a rich chestnut head, pale cream crown stripe, and grey axillary feathers that distinguish it from its American relative.
waterfowl
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
Wattled Jacana
A chestnut-and-black wetland bird best known for its extraordinarily long toes, which let it walk across lily pads and floating vegetation. A bright yellow facial shield and greenish-yellow flight feathers add to its distinctive look.
shorebird
Rough-legged Hawk
The Rough-legged Hawk is an Arctic-breeding buteo with a pale tail base and dark terminal band, a dark belly patch, and dark carpal patches on the underwing, plus legs feathered fully to the toes for insulation.
raptor