Different Types of Bird Feathers

Feathers emerged from the scales of reptiles and kept birds apart from all other creatures. Feathers are essential for insulation, flight, and courtship displays. Feather shapes and colors help us differentiate between various species
of birds and, in some cases, between females and males.

As feathers are so diverse, there are several other anatomical and technical terms practiced in their descriptions. This article will help you know a few of this terminology and understand more about these fantastic adaptations.

Types of Feathers

As there are several hair types on furred animals, birds have different kinds of feathers, each holding a unique function. The kinds of feathers include:

● Feathers with Vanes: Contour and Flight Feathers
● Down Feathers

● Filoplume
● Semiplume
● Bristle

Contour Feathers

Contour feathers include a maximum of the surface of the bird while offering a smooth appearance. They protect them from rain, sun, wind, and injury. Usually, these feathers are bright colors and have multiple color patterns. Contour feathers are distributed into flight feathers and those that cover the body.

Flight Feathers

Flight feathers are the long feathers of the tail and wing. The feather that makes up the wings are called remiges and are divided into three groups.

The primaries attach to the phalangeal (finger) and metacarpal (wrist) bones at the remote end of the wing and are responsible for forwarding thrust. There typically are ten primaries, and they are calculated from the inside out.

The secondaries connect to the ulna, a bone in the center of the wing, and are vital in providing “lift.” They also use them in courtship displays. There are generally 10-14 secondaries, and they are calculated from the outside in.

The flight feathers nearest to the body are known as tertiaries. The tail feathers, named retrices, function as brakes and a rudder, managing the orientation of the flight. Most birds possess 12 tail feathers.

The bases of the flight feathers are coated with petite contour feathers, coverts. There are many layers of coverts on the wing. You can also see coverts on the bird’s ear.

Down Feathers

Down feathers are small, fluffy, soft, and are beneath the contour feathers. They are plumaceous and possess multiple non-interlocking barbs, lacking the barbules and hooklets found in flight and contour feathers.

This makes it accessible for them to catch air in an insulating layer close to the skin, preserving the bird from cold and heat. They are so helpful that people use these feathers for insulation in comforters and down jackets.

There are particular kinds of downy feathers, powder down feathers. When the barbs or sheaths of these feathers separate, they make a fine keratin powder, which the bird can spread across its feathers as a water-resisting medium.

The powder also helps in cleaning as the bird preens. The lack of powder down in birds such as African greys and cockatoos can signify disease, including feather and beak disease.

Filoplumes

Filoplumes are extremely fine, hair-like feathers, with an enormous shaft and just some barbs at their tips. However, no one knows their role. But, they have a sensory use, perhaps shifting the position of the flight feathers in response to air pressure.

Semiplumes

Semiplumes provide form, insulation, and aerodynamics. They also perform a part in courtship displays. They have long rachis but relaxed (plumaceous) vanes. You may see them along with contour feathers or in different pterylae.

Bristle Feathers

Bristle feathers have strong rachis with just some barbs at the base. They are generally on the head (near the eyelids, mouth, and nares). They hold both a protective and sensory function.

Feather Anatomy

Feathers are made of keratin, the same protein associated with nails and hair. Feathers own a central shaft. The soft, unpigmented base, which stretches beneath the skin into the feather follicle, is termed the calamus.

The part above the skin, from which the tinier barbs or branches spread, is called the scapus or rachis. A set of filaments on each side of the rachis, called barbs, come off at around a 45º angle. This part of the feather that has barbs is the vane.

In the more giant feathers, these barbs possess two sets of microscopic filaments named barbules. Barbules from one barb pass the nearby barbs at a 90º angle.

Barbules, in turn, have hooklets, seldom recognized as barbicels or hamuli, which hook the barbules collectively like a zipper, making a tight, smooth surface. These sustain the feather’s shape, and without these excellent linkages, the feather would not withstand the air resistance through flight.

The hooklets or barbs may become separated from each other; if this happens, the bird can rejoin them while preening. At the bottom of the feathers, there are frequently barbs that are not hooked jointly. These are termed downy barbs.

Feathers with hooklets and barbules are termed “pennaceous,” One can conceive them as the feathers that a bird would practice for a quill pen. Feathers without hooklets and barbules, such as down feathers, are termed “plumulaceous” and have a more plume appearance.

Several feathers have both pennaceous and plumulaceous parts. Some feathers have hypopnea or afterfeathers at the vane base in an area called the distal umbilicus. These are barbs without hooks, which support the trap of air and provide some insulation.

Feather Growth

Like hair, feathers grow in a specific area in the skin called a follicle. As a new feather grows, it has a vein and artery that reaches up through the shaft and supports the feather. A feather at this level is a blood feather. Because of the color of the blood supply, the shaft of a blood feather will look dark, whereas a mature, older feather will be white.

A blood feather holds a giant quill (calamus) more than a mature feather. The blood feather begins with a waxy keratin sheath that preserves it while it develops. When the feather is grown, the blood supply decreases, and the bird will remove the waxy sheath.

Although a mature bird will usually replace each of its feathers during a molt. The loss of feathers occurs over a span of a few months, so the bird has enough feathers for insulation and flight.

Molting generally occurs when the day length changes or after breeding. Few wild bird species, such as goldfinches, which molt twice a year, switch from a bright plumage to a more somber plumage throughout the breeding season.

Feather Color

The presence of several pigments, including carotenoids, melanins, and porphyrins determines the feather color.

Carotenoids

Carotenoids are usually orange, yellow, or red. They are synthesized in plants, consumed by the bird’s digestive system, and then carried up by the follicle cells as the feather is growing.

Melanins

Melanins are black to brown pigments that are also in animals. Besides adding color to the feather, melanins also create the feather denser and more protected to wear and break down by sunlight.

Porphyrins

Porphyrins are green and red pigments that cells produce in the feather follicle.

Final Thoughts

The next time you see a bird, you will better know how its feathers protect it and create it feasible for the bird to fly. Down to the microscopic level, you can cherish the specialization and complexity that make birds a special member of the animal kingdom.

Ornithology

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