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.
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
Snowy Egret
A small, energetic white heron of the Americas known for its black bill, black legs, and bright yellow feet.
wading bird
Reddish Egret
A distinctive coastal heron known for its shaggy, reddish head and neck plumage and its animated, dancing foraging behavior.
wading bird
Little Egret
A dainty white heron of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, best known for its black legs and bright yellow feet.
wading bird
Great Kiskadee
A large, boldly patterned flycatcher named for its loud, ringing call, with a black-and-white striped head, sulfur-yellow underparts, and rufous edging on the wings and tail. It is a common and conspicuous bird from Texas to Argentina.
songbird
Great Skua
A powerfully built, gull-sized seabird cloaked in dark brown plumage flecked with rufous and buff, best known for its bold white wing-flash and aggressive, piratical habits.
seabird
Great-tailed Grackle
The Great-tailed Grackle is a large, adaptable blackbird known for the male's exceptionally long, keeled tail and glossy iridescent plumage, now common across much of the southern and central United States and beyond.
songbird
Cocoi Heron
The South American counterpart to the Great Blue Heron, with a bold black cap and crisp white neck.
wading bird
Western Reef Heron
A coastal heron of Africa and Asia closely related to the Little Egret, occurring in both dark and white color forms.
wading bird
Pacific Reef Heron
A stocky coastal heron of the Indo-Pacific found in two color forms, an all slate-grey dark morph and a pure white light morph, both hunting the wave-washed edges of reefs and rocky shores.
wading bird
Intermediate Egret
A medium-sized all-white egret of Asia, Africa, and Australia, best told apart from its larger and smaller relatives by bill proportions and the extent of bare skin around the eye.
wading bird
Great Hornbill
The Great Hornbill is one of the largest Asian hornbills, marked by bold black-and-white plumage and topped with a massive yellow-and-black casque. It flies with loud, whooshing wingbeats between fruiting trees in dense evergreen forest.
other
Greater Kestrel
The Greater Kestrel is a robust southern African kestrel, larger than the Common Kestrel, with a barred rufous back, pale underparts, and a distinctive pale eye.
raptor
Greater Yellownape
A large, uniformly olive-green woodpecker of Asian forests, best recognized by its shaggy yellow nape crest rather than the black-and-white patterning typical of pied woodpeckers.
woodpecker
Great Black-backed Gull
The world's largest gull, the Great Black-backed Gull shows strikingly dark slate-black mantle feathers contrasting with a pure white head and body, and is a powerful predator as well as scavenger along North Atlantic coasts.
seabird
Greater Prairie-Chicken
A grassland grouse of the central United States, known for the male's elongated neck feathers and orange air sacs displayed during energetic booming courtship gatherings.
gamebird
White-faced Heron
The most widespread heron in Australia and New Zealand, easily recognized by its soft blue-grey plumage set off by a clean white face.
wading bird
Little Blue Heron
A heron with a striking life-history twist: pure white as a juvenile, then molting into a deep slate-purple plumage as an adult.
wading bird
Tricolored Heron
A slender dark heron of the Americas, easily told from other dark herons by the crisp white line running down its foreneck and belly.
wading bird
Common Gull
A neat, medium-sized gull of Europe and Asia known as Mew Gull in North American populations, the Common Gull shows pale gray back feathers, black wingtips with white spots, and a gentle, rounded head shape.
seabird
Black Sparrowhawk
The largest African accipiter, occurring in a striking pied form with sharply demarcated black upperparts and white underparts as well as an all-black melanistic form, both built for fast pursuit through forest canopy.
raptor
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
A large all-white cockatoo with a tall sulphur-yellow crest that fans forward when the bird is alert or excited.
parrot
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
Willie Wagtail
A bold black-and-white fantail relative common across Australia, the Willie Wagtail is known for constantly wagging its long tail from side to side while perched or foraging.
songbird