#head feathers

[photozoi]

Quilt, the Dad, rockin’ his head feathers.

Pumpkinseed, one of the moms, demonstrating her more restrained style.

And then there’s Bumble. Rebelling against your elders fashions is a teen standard.

[stinkek]

Hey, jammers, could you please explain what’s so amazing about spiked accessories, headdresses and head feathers? I don’t see anything special.

[serialbirdskinner]

Parts of a Song Bird's Head!

A continuation of my previous post on bird feather anatomy - a close up of their heads.  Which, incidentally, is very important when identifying birds, especially sparrows.  Sometimes, immature birds look similar to adults of a separate species, but a good, hard look at their head patterns can explain the difference.  Most of these names are pretty simple when you think about it, but there really are a lot of them.

The bird on the bottom is a White-Throated Sparrow.  While the white throat is pretty obvious here, it's often hard to spot in the field, so one key marking is the yellow patch on the fore-supercilium, between the eye and bill.