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.
Weka
The Weka is a robust, flightless New Zealand rail with streaked brown plumage, known for its bold, inquisitive, and often opportunistic behaviour around people.
wading bird
Speckled Pigeon
A large African pigeon with striking reddish-brown wings covered in bold white spots and a patch of bare red skin around each eye.
dove pigeon
Sage Thrasher
The smallest and most compact North American thrasher, a streaky gray-brown bird of sagebrush country with a shorter, straighter bill than its relatives.
songbird
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
A plain brown swallow similar to Bank Swallow but lacking a sharp breast band, instead showing a soft, diffuse brownish wash across the throat.
songbird
Japanese Grosbeak
A large, heavy-billed finch of East Asian forests, recognized by its black head, gray-brown body, and oversized pale-yellow bill.
songbird
Meadow Pipit
The Meadow Pipit is a small, streaky brown songbird of open country, its cryptic, heavily streaked feathers providing camouflage against grass and heather.
songbird
Curve-billed Thrasher
A grayish-brown desert songbird with a long, strongly down-curved bill, well adapted to foraging among cactus and thorny scrub of the American Southwest.
songbird
Canyon Wren
A rufous-brown, cliff-dwelling wren with a striking bright white throat, best known for its cascading, silvery song that echoes through canyons.
songbird
Black Francolin
A boldly patterned gamebird with males showing black plumage dotted with white spots and a chestnut neck collar, while females are cryptically mottled brown.
gamebird
Yellow-rumped Warbler
One of North America's most abundant warblers, easily known by small bright-yellow patches on the rump, sides, and crown set against streaky gray-brown feathers.
songbird
Southern Boobook
Australia's most familiar and widespread owl, named for its distinctive 'boo-book' call, with dark brown feathers boldly spotted white above and streaked buff below.
owl
Rock Ptarmigan
A circumpolar tundra grouse that turns from mottled gray-brown in summer to pure white in winter, always retaining black tail feathers as a year-round field mark.
gamebird
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
Pacific Wren
A tiny, dark rufous-brown wren of western old-growth forest understory, nearly identical to the Winter Wren but distinguished mainly by range and its distinctly different song.
songbird
Nightingale
The Nightingale is a plain brown songbird celebrated for its powerful, richly varied nighttime song, far more often heard than seen in dense thickets across Europe.
songbird
Indian Scops Owl
The Indian Scops Owl is a small, grey-brown owl of the Indian subcontinent whose finely mottled, bark-like feathers help it disappear against tree trunks by day.
owl
Chestnut-quilled Rock Pigeon
The Chestnut-quilled Rock Pigeon is an Australian escarpment specialist whose otherwise grey-brown plumage reveals bold chestnut patches on the flight feathers when it takes wing.
dove pigeon
Burrowing Owl
A small, long-legged owl of open grassland and prairie that nests underground in burrows, with brown, white-spotted plumage above and barred underparts, often active during daylight.
owl
Blue Grosbeak
A stocky North American bunting relative, the Blue Grosbeak shows deep blue plumage and chestnut wing bars in males, while females wear a warm, understated brown.
songbird
Eastern Towhee
A large, ground-dwelling sparrow relative with bold black (or brown), white, and rufous plumage, often first noticed scratching noisily through leaf litter in dense thickets.
songbird
Eastern Phoebe
A plain-plumaged flycatcher recognized more by its tail-wagging habit than bright colors, with grayish-brown feathers above and a faint yellow wash on white underparts.
songbird
Corn Bunting
The Corn Bunting is a large, stocky, and plainly streaked farmland bunting, with brown-and-buff feathers that lack the bright colors of its relatives but show a heavy, seed-cracking bill.
songbird
Hermit Thrush
A quiet, spot-breasted thrush best known for its habit of slowly raising and lowering its rufous tail, a useful clue among the similar brown Catharus thrushes.
songbird
Greater Rhea
A large flightless ratite of South American grasslands, with soft, loose grayish-brown plumage and a long neck, related more to ostriches and emus than to typical flying birds.
other