Country diary: The story of birds starts with their feathers

The Guardian reports the following. ENC is republishing it as an attributed briefing, not as independently confirmed fact. If this item is false or incomplete, the responsibility sits with The Guardian, which released it. River Lagan, Belfast: Right now you can see winter in the black-headed gull plumage, and spring in the mallards’. Yet feathers are also vital to how birds even came to exist On my walk along the towpath , I pick up a small grey feather. It’s a flight feather , probably from the wing of a feral pigeon . I stroke it absently as I watch the birds that are swimming on the river’s surface. Steeped in autumn sunshine, the different species are also feathered with other seasons. Summer is in the fuzzy down of a late-hatched moorhen chick. Winter gleams in the white heads of the “black-headed” gulls. And, while a mallard ’s emerald-green head is, as yet, tatty as old velvet, his crisply curled drake’s tails herald the coming spring. If the story of birds is told in their plumage, then moult – the… Original link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/13/country-diary-the-story-of-birds-starts-with-their-feathers