Country diary: The story of birds starts with their feathers

由 AI 翻译自 The Guardian · Animals

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 shedding and regrowth of feathers – is the turn of a page. The moorhen chick reminds me that the first chapter is about keeping warm . I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, almost tucking the pigeon feather in as well. While our hair and birds’ feathers are both made of keratin , they differ in how they grow. In essence, hair extends as a single linear thread, whereas down feathers emerge frothing in all directions. As a fledgling matures, its outer feathers then lengthen, with a central shaft supporting branches that can flatten out and zip together to make a smooth surface. Continue reading...