When RMS Titanic sank in 1912, 40 cases of exotic feathers ordered by New York milliners were lost, their value greater than their weight in gold. A decade later, George Bernard Shaw described chilly, tweed-clad Everest climbers as ‘resembling a Connemara picnic surprised by a snowstorm’ — but one, George Finch, wore a suit lined with eider down, and stated that ‘every-one felt the cold except myself’. He had discovered what penguins already knew: a dense layer of down provides the finest known insulation, enabling the birds’ survival both in Antarctic storms and deep underwater. Feathers have many remarkable qualities and they entrance the human eye.
Birds, their 11,000 species greatly outnumbering mammals, evolved over aeons from feathered dinosaurs, via the winged Archaeopteryx, developing plumage incomparably more versatile than fur or hair. Feathers consist of keratin — like hair and nails — but of a reptilian type. The shafts, hollow at the bottom, solid further up, grow from follicles in the skin and from them branch tightly contiguous filaments or ‘barbs’, which form the vanes of the feather. Each barb has scores of tiny hooks (barbules), which mesh into each other like Velcro to form a smooth surface, restorable if disturbed by combing with the bird’s bill.
From dowager duchesses to the dancers of the Moulin Rouge, ostrich plumes, often dyed fantastic colours, have nodded and shivered their way into society at all levels.
Feathers are of three main types. Flight feathers are comparatively long, strong and flexible, with narrowed front vanes. Connected by ligaments and tendons to wing bones activated by powerful muscles in the chest, they form aerofoils that enable flight; similar tail feathers assist steering. Contour feathers, closely overlapping and subject to muscular control (they can be puffed out) provide protection, shape and colour. Beneath them, down feathers are hookless, soft and fluffy, retaining internal — or resisting external — heat. Some birds also possess bristles or filoplumes, perhaps with sensory function. A swan may have 25,000 feathers, wrens about 2,000 (small bodies need proportionately more to keep warm). A bird’s feathers typically weigh twice as much as its skeleton.
Birds generate lift and thrust by beating their wings. On downstrokes the outer (primary) flight feathers are closed, on upstrokes held apart. Getting aloft is assisted by running or swooping. Teal can take off almost vertically, but swifts, with their almost vestigial legs and long narrow wings for rapid, prolonged flight — sometimes 100,000 miles a year — avoid taking off from the ground as they struggle to generate the required lift from a flat surface.
On landing, birds steeply adjust the angle of their wings and open the flight feathers. Unlike conventional aircraft, they generally need no landing run. Hein van Grouw, senior bird curator at the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire (which holds the world’s largest bird-specimen collection), believes ‘birds never unintentionally stall’. Biologist and writer Thor Hanson understandably calls feathers ‘the evolution of a natural miracle’.
Sir Elton John has worn feathers on stage, multiple time, and Dior produced a translucent feather shirt for men. Feather buttonholes and bow ties are available, too, if you like that sort of thing.
One miraculous feature is the ability in many cases — notably ducks, dippers and especially penguins — to keep their owners dry. The overlapping of the cover feathers, naturally hydrophobic anyway, is so tight and perfect that water cannot penetrate to the underlying down, which, if wet, would cease to insulate (although downy ducklings somehow swim without disaster). Owls, observes Hein, have ‘soft, quiet feathers, vulnerable to rain’. Oddly, some seabirds, notably the frigate (with inflatable red chest), lack water resistance, so has to fish by skimming only its beak into the waves.
Plumage is kept in condition by regular preening, involving for most birds the distribution of an ‘oil’ from a gland under the tail. Doves, Amazon parrots and the dangerous cassowary, which have no preen gland, possess instead a type of feather (powder down) that fragments into a dust with conditioning qualities. Partridge chicks, mobile on hatching, grow flight feathers astonishingly fast: egg to air in 14 days. A young albatross needs eight months before decades flying above the restless ocean. Before they fledge, grebes feed nutritious masticated feathers to their young.
Although they are extremely robust, feathers do nevertheless wear out and are vulnerable to lice, but replace themselves by moulting: shedding old stems for replacements grown from the same follicle. When moulting, some birds cannot fly. Mallards are ‘sitting ducks’ for about a month.
Flight is, for most birds (although perhaps 60 species are incapable), their supreme miraculous ability, from bird-table robin to the almost unbelievable bi-polar migrations of Arctic terns. The feathers of bar-headed geese provide lift and warmth sufficient to cross the Himalayas twice a year. Different wing shapes facilitate the soaring of condors, frigatebirds sleeping in flight, falcons’ 200mph stoops and hummingbirds hovering. The tiny wing feathers of the spangled coquette, which oscillate at 80 beats per second, uniquely enable backward flight, so exhausting as to require restorative ‘torpors’, a short, low-temperature nap. Penguins’ feather ‘wings’ are hard fins.
A Poland chicken with its flamboyant crest of feathers, which can be white above a black body, laced with black or cuckoo barred.
Many birds enjoy splendid camouflage, such as the sombre russets of the woodcock or the white of winter ptarmigan, finely portrayed in Archibald Thorburn’s paintings. Yet plumage, especially in the gloom of tropical jungle, is often vividly flamboyant for dimorphic sexual display, exemplified by the peacock. Bright hues — birds’ colour vision is superior to ours — result from natural melanin or from light refraction on feather structures. Ostentatious plumage attracts females. Lengthy tails (the superb lyrebird) and strange dances (riflebirds) are effective, too. So admired are spectacular feathers that they have been taken for human embellishment. The iridescent emerald quetzal, which trails its long green tail out of nest holes to mimic ferns, was appropriated for Aztec headdresses. Roman helmets bore ostrich crests; the Chinese liked kingfishers and golden pheasants; Marie Antoinette favoured poufs: towering compositions of hair, plumage and avian parts. The Cheyenne revered eagles.
In the 19th and early 20th century, fashionable women in Europe and North America became passionate about millinery containing feathers, even complete birds; coveting egrets, ostrich, scarlet ibis, grebes and hummingbirds (some weighing less than an ounce). Ornithologist Frank Chapman noted 40 species worn in New York in 1886, and many millions of birds were killed for fashion. Birds of paradise, naturalist A. W. Wallace’s ‘masterpieces of nature’, suffered dreadfully. Carolina parakeets were hunted to extinction.
This slaughter provoked protest and reform. Societies were founded, protective legislation passed and, after 1914, tastes changed, although the Charleston was danced in feathered headbands and New Guinea tribes-men continued shooting paradise birds into the 1950s. Ostrich feathers from South African farms still entice at the Moulin Rouge. There is contemporary British enthusiasm for plumed hats and fascinators, created from legitimate, sustainable sources. Leading couture milliner Jess Collett reports that 30% of her hats include plumage, especially for Ascot. ‘Feathers are fun,’ she says. ‘They provide delightful movement and are satisfying to work with.’ Ordinary feathers can be made to look exotic; Valentino, Gautier and Givenchy have all employed plumage.
England’s only remaining plumassier (feather supplier) is Jaffé et Fils, a family firm in Axminster, Devon. Gilly Jaffé explains, with the vim of one resisting Chinese competition and ‘determined to keep my craft alive’, how ‘splendidly feathers can be coloured and formed… they last indefinitely, provided moths do not get at them’. She meets military, fashion, film and theatrical demand.
Feathers have also had vital practical uses. Military success for centuries was based upon millions of arrows, before archery was replaced by slower firing, less effective, muskets. The 5,000 longbowmen at Agincourt shot about 100 arrows each, mostly fletched with goose feathers. Between the 5th and 19th centuries, almost all writing was done with quill pens, usually from the primary flight feathers of geese or crows. Stems were cured in warm ash, vanes removed and nibs cut with a penknife. (Pens are named after the Latin penna, for feather.) Metal nibs appeared in 1822, but Dickens always used a quill.
Artists have also painted with pin feathers: Letitia Kerr was a Victorian miniaturist with exceptional delicacy of touch. Today, Clare Brownlow paints feathers with feathers, creating wildlife pictures in Northumberland with fine-pointed pheasant quills and acrylic ink. She describes a ‘very methodical and messy technique’ in which, paradoxically, ‘precision is key’. Her subjects, whether grouse in flight or vivid macaw, display lively animation and sharp accuracy.
Fly-fishermen tie their hooks with feathers, and may, if prosperous, sleep beneath an eiderdown quilt, a warm, expensive luxury made from down collected from the vacated Icelandic nests of eider duck, sociable birds with a friendly ooh ooh call, like happy people in a communal bath. Explorers need down clothing. Maids once wielded ostrich-feather dusters, their mistresses feather fans, and 19th-century golf balls had feather cores.
Avian flight prompted the study of feathers by Leonardo da Vinci, the Wright brothers and modern aero-engineers, for feather wings are more efficiently adjustable than wooden or metal ones. Replicating the attributes of feathers is difficult, although Daedalus, designer of the Cretan labyrinth, legendarily attempted it when imprisoned with his son Icarus. He created wings of feathers and beeswax with which to escape, warning Icarus not to fly too close to the sun. The boy did, however, and fell to his death, as depicted by the artist Gowy in 1637.
‘Human’ wings in art often signify grace, freedom, proximity to God: think of Caravaggio’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1597) and Bouguereau’s Song of the Angels (1881). Feathered holiness slays evil in Reni’s The Archangel Michael Defeating Satan (1635). Chunky classical cherubs sport little wings and Abbott Thayer (1849–1921) specialised in feathered female angels.
Sadly, unlike birds, humans lack the necessary pectoral muscles to fly without ethereal assistance. Mankind cannot know the bliss of feathered flight.
This feature originally appeared in the February 18, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.