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.
Wild Turkey
A large North American gamebird with iridescent bronze-green body feathers, a broad fan-shaped tail banded in dark brown and buff, and a bare, colorful head.
gamebird
Turkey Vulture
A widespread scavenger known for its two-toned wings, silvery flight feathers set against a dark body, and its habit of soaring in a shallow V with a distinctive teetering flight.
raptor
Ocellated Turkey
A striking Central American turkey with vivid blue-bronze iridescent body feathers and tail feathers marked with distinctive eye-shaped spots.
gamebird
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
Red Junglefowl
The wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, with males displaying glossy orange-gold neck hackles and long, curved, iridescent black tail feathers.
gamebird
Zone-tailed Hawk
A blackish hawk that closely mimics the flight silhouette and dark coloring of the Turkey Vulture, distinguished mainly by its banded tail feathers.
raptor
Horned Screamer
A large, turkey-sized waterbird of South American wetlands, unmistakable for the long, slender horn-like spine projecting from its forehead. Its blackish, white-speckled plumage and loud trumpeting calls carry across open marshland.
other
Great Curassow
A large, turkey-sized forest bird, with males glossy black and white below and topped by a curly crest and bright yellow bill knob. Females occur in several distinct color morphs, ranging from barred to rufous to blackish.
gamebird
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
Brown Creeper
A tree-trunk specialist whose mottled brown and buff feathers mimic bark texture perfectly, paired with stiff, pointed tail feathers that brace against trunks like a woodpecker's.
songbird
Emu
Australia's largest bird, the Emu has loose, hair-like feathers that grow in pairs from a single shaft, giving its plumage a shaggy, fur-like texture unlike any flying bird.
other
Honey Buzzard
The Honey Buzzard is a highly variable Eurasian raptor specialized in raiding wasp and bee nests, recognizable by its small, pigeon-like head, dense scale-like facial feathers for protection, and boldly banded tail.
raptor
Brown Kiwi
A flightless, nocturnal New Zealand bird with shaggy, hair-like feathers and a long probing bill used to find invertebrates in leaf litter.
other
Vasa Parrot
A large, dark, unusually plain-plumaged parrot from Madagascar known for its loose, almost vulture-like feathering.
parrot
Victoria Crowned Pigeon
The Victoria Crowned Pigeon is one of the largest pigeons alive, topped with an elaborate lace-like fan of blue feathers tipped in white.
dove pigeon
Nicobar Pigeon
The Nicobar Pigeon is a striking island pigeon with long, shimmering hackle-like neck feathers in shifting metallic greens and coppers, set off by a pure white tail.
dove pigeon
Ruddy Turnstone
A boldly patterned, harlequin-like shorebird known for flipping stones and debris in search of food, with breeding feathers combining rufous, black, and white in a striking tortoiseshell pattern.
shorebird
Grey Junglefowl
An Indian forest gamebird whose males have neck hackle feathers tipped with an unusual glassy, wax-like yellow spangle unlike any other bird.
gamebird
Great Argus
A pheasant of Southeast Asian rainforest famous for the male's extraordinarily elongated wing feathers, patterned with large eye-like spots and displayed in a dramatic fan during courtship.
gamebird
Scaled Dove
A small South American dove whose breast and neck feathers carry dark, crescent-shaped edges that overlap like fish scales.
dove pigeon
Parasitic Jaeger
A sleek, agile seabird intermediate in size between the two other jaegers, identified in breeding adults by narrow, pointed central tail feathers and a swift, falcon-like flight.
seabird
Bohemian Waxwing
A sleek, crested songbird best known for the bright red, wax-like tips on its wing feathers, which give the species its name.
songbird
Green Bee-eater
A small, brilliantly green bee-eater found from Africa to South Asia, with a thin black eye stripe and a fine pin-like extension to its central tail feathers.
other
Dunnock
An unassuming, sparrow-like songbird with soft grey head and breast feathers and a streaked brown back, easily overlooked but distinct once compared with true sparrows.
songbird