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.
Trumpeter Swan
The heaviest native North American bird and largest swan, entirely white with a solid black bill, sometimes showing a rust-stained head from iron-rich feeding grounds.
waterfowl
Tundra Swan
A large all-white swan of the Arctic tundra, smaller and more compact than the Trumpeter Swan, often showing a small yellow spot at the base of the bill.
waterfowl
Black-necked Swan
A striking South American swan with a pure white body set off by a jet-black head and neck, plus a bright red facial knob at the base of the bill.
waterfowl
Whooper Swan
A large Eurasian swan, entirely white with a straighter neck carriage than Mute Swan, known for its loud bugling call given in flight and on the water.
waterfowl
Mute Swan
An enormous, entirely white waterbird whose large, gently curved feathers are unmistakable simply by their sheer size among freshwater birds.
waterfowl
Black Swan
An Australian swan with distinctively curled, sooty black-gray body feathers and a striking red bill, its white flight feathers hidden until the wings are spread.
waterfowl
White-tailed Ptarmigan
The smallest ptarmigan species and the only one with an all-white tail year-round, found on high alpine tundra of western North America.
gamebird
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
European Golden Plover
The Old World golden plover of moorland and tundra, showing bold gold-spangled upperparts and, in northern breeders, black underparts bordered by a white band.
shorebird
Snow Goose
An abundant white goose with crisp black wingtips, occurring in a darker "blue" morph as well, that breeds on Arctic tundra and winters in enormous flocks on farmland and marshes.
waterfowl
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
Red-necked Phalarope
A tiny, tundra-nesting phalarope that spends most of the year far out at sea, the Red-necked Phalarope shows a bold chestnut neck patch in breeding females and streaked dark-and-buff upperparts with a distinct white wing stripe.
shorebird