Peregrine Falcon Feather

Found this feather at the foot of one of the tall buildings here. 

Had an instinctive hunch that it was a falcon feather.  

Went to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Feather Atlas.

You can narrow your search by Unpatterned, Two-Tone, Mottled, Barred, Spotted, Colorful Iridescence, Dark Tip, or Pale Tip. 

And the colour.  

Chose Barred and Gray.  

And the best match I found was....Peregrine Falcon.  

So my hunch was (I believe) right. Maybe I know more about feathers than I think. But, given the size of it, and given the makeup of bird populations in the downtown area, it was a pretty reasonable guess.

The Feather Atlas

I always get a thrill out of finding skulls and feathers and antlers and the like when I wander around in the woods. The problem I have with feathers is that very often I have no idea what bird it comes from, and trying to figure it out often proves difficult. I have a few bird guides, but I wished I could find one that identified just feathers. One on eggs would be neat too.

While searching for such a thing, I came across this very helpful online guide – The Feather Atlas: Flight Feathers of North American Birds, from the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

If you have a fairly good idea of what it is already, it can be searched by browsing the scans of feathers organized by Order, you can search by name, either the Order, the Family, the Common Name or the Scientific Name, or you can search by looking at feathers, and there are helpful tools to help you narrow down the search from there.

Kudos to the US Fish & Wildlife Service for a very helpful resource. It might almost obviate my desire and need for a book. Oh who am I kidding?