BIRDS : FEATHERS on Yahoo! Kids

Birds

What Makes a Bird a Bird? Feathers!
Birds are the only creatures with feathers. ”Light as a feather” is no exaggeration. Feathers weigh very little, but birds could not live without them. Feathers allow flight, provide terrific insulation, and keep rain and snow away from the skin. They can be colorful as a rainbow or make a bird blend in perfectly with its surroundings.

Feather Types.
Birds have several different types of feathers, including contour feathers and down feathers. Soft and fluffy, down feathers grow under the body feathers and provide insulation. A contour feather may be a large, stiff feather on the wing or tail like this one, or a smaller body feather. Every feather on a birdąs body is controlled by a set of tiny muscles, which allows the bird to raise or lower them -- fluffing its feathers on a cold day, for example.

Contour Feather: The shaft is the long stiff quill that runs up the middle of every feather. The vanes on both sides of the shaft are made up of thousands of tiny strands called barbs.

Feather barbs. © Pat Lynch - Photo Researchers, Inc.

A Feather Close-up
You need a microscope to see that each barb in a feather’s vanes is covered with tiny hooks that grip each other like miniature zippers. You can pull the barbs apart, then stroke them back together again with your fingertips. A bird does this with its beak when it preens.

Out with the Old
Most birds replace their feathers every year, a few at a time, in a process called molting. A new feather grows out of the skin, inside a covering that looks like a straw; when it is fully grown, the cover peels away. Ducks and geese lose all their big wing feathers at once, so they are flightless for a few weeks in summer while the new ones grow in.

An Incredible Quantity of Feathers
All the feathers on a bird’s body are called its plumage. A tiny Ruby-throated Hummingbird has about 1,000 feathers; a White-throated Sparrow has about 2,000. A scientist once counted every feather on a Tundra Swan, from the largest wing quills to the tiniest fluff of down, and came up with 25,216.

Learn more about the wonders of nature with Ranger Rick magazine, brought to you by the National Wildlife Federation.

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