I was recently gifted with an assortment of feathers from a friend. She knew what most of them were from but there were a couple she had gotten from someone else and didn’t know. I’ve scoured Google but can’t find photos of feathers that look like mine. Maybe someone here might know what birds these are from?
Here’s a scan of them. The big brown one is approx. 12 inches long from tip of feather to end of quill, and about 2 inches wide at its widest point.
The black and white one is approx. 4 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide.
The left one is definitely not a Blue Jay. They don’t have any feathers with multiple bands of white like that, and in any case the feather should show some blue. My first guess is that is may be a secondary flight feather from a woodpecker, but I am not certain.
My first guess on the other one is that it is from a some kind of pheasant.
Since we don’t know the geographic origin of the feathers, it may be tough to come up with a definitive answer.
Yeah, the brown one doesn’t look turkey to me, unless it’s a variety I’ve never seen. I’ve worked with turkey wing and tail feathers before so I’m familiar with a lot of patterns; mottled, barred, etc. This feather I’ve got seems to have a thicker, harder quill, and the tip tapers to a swordlike shape rather than a rounded shape like turkey feathers.
The one on the right reminds me of a tail feather from an India Blue peafowl - the peahens have brownish-red tail feathers and the peacocks have brown/red speckled feathers supporting their larger, showier tailfeathers.
Re Woodpecker, note how the wing feathers are blackish with multiple white spots on each one. There aren’t too many birds that have this kind of pattern.
A Blue Jay has only single white spots on the tips of the wing feathers.
Yes, the woodpecker is much closer to the one I have. too bad the one pictured doesn’t have its feathers extended so I can see the whole wing.
ggurl, I have a pretty strong feeling it’s a wing feather due to the shape. Tail feathers are usually symmetrically shaped on each side and more rounded at the tip. Also the quill on mine is quite stiff suggesting it would be used to support flight.
Both are definitely flight feathers. Google only helped me a little, but most of the large game birds had a lot of barring and speckling, nothing subtle.
You sure the one on the right is from N. America?
FYI, I emailed the wildlife forensics division of this site with my scans. They were kind enough to ID them for me, but said they primarily investigate wildlife crimes and usually don’t respond to public inquiries.
