Feather identification (1 Viewer)

[Lifted]

How are you, beautiful people of the birb forums
I am trying to figure out who is the fella that dropped this feather on my front yard. I love picking up feathers from wild doves and other birds and save them as a spiritual souvenirs, and I feed birds on my backyard all the time. Birds really love croissants from Costco by the way, give it a shot, haha! Every bird loves those croissants.
Here is the feather, and a penny for size understanding.
Is that an owl? Maybe a hawk?
Our Phoenix, Arizona owls are grey mostly, and I thought hawks will have different type of feathers, but it does match the color of them.
Any ideas?
Would love to hear the theories.
I live in Phoenix, AZ, we do have a lot of migrant birds, and even saw couple of parents that had a family together.

We have a lot of exotic migrating birds in odd times of the year. As they leave colder regions.

Thank you!

 

[Butty]

I'd guess some big raptor or great horned owl.

 

[KC Foggin]

Hi there and a warm welcome to you from those of us on staff here at BirdForum
We're glad you found us and please join in wherever you like.

My first thought was from an Owl but I can't say for sure. Do you, by any chance, get the length of the feather in inches?

 

[Lifted]

Thank you!
I just measured the whole feather is 7 1/4" from top to bottom
My first guess was owl too, but I have never saw brown owls here, though owls are one of the most elusive creatures in this state. They are so quiet. Though I had a fascinating experience, I had an owl sitting directly over my bed on the roof, and hooting, and I kept complaining to my Mom that these "pigeons" are keeping me up at night. Then my Mom goes: "Pigeons don't coo at night"
I had chills and yet excitement, because I understood that it's an owl.
I am BIG into omens and spiritual signs, and owls being a sign of wisdom were always fascinating to me.
It was when I was 16, and little did I know I spent most of my life helping people, and as an experienced person, I don't want to scream I am wise, but I know owls are very powerful omens in Native American culture and seeing them brings a lot of warmth to my heart these days.
I have an owl feather that is literally 3 times longer than this one, and they got that feather from Grand Canyon owl, I used to sage room with it.
The one I found today is on the smaller side, but it's unusual in color. Most of our native owls are grey and sandy colored.

This one is definite brown, so it's either a migrating owl, or something else.

 

[nartreb]

Owl feathers have a kind of fuzziness to their flat surfaces - it's soundproofing. I don't see that here, though I'd need a very good close-up photo to be confident. My guess would be hawk, probably red-tailed hawk, maybe a secondary wing feather.
Try this tool, but note that many species are rather variable: The Feather Atlas - ID Tool

Also worth reading their summary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Feathers and the Law -- the Feather Atlas
Under the Act, it is "unlawful... to possess... any part of" a migratory bird, which means you could get into legal trouble if you take home the feather of any hawk or owl native to North America. (You can keep the feathers of ducks and other game birds you've legally hunted, and there are special exceptions for traditional Native American uses.)

 

[Butty]

"unlawful... to possess... any part of" a migratory bird

...or non-migratory bird. Enforcement would be impossible otherwise.

The Feather Atlas - Feather Identification and Scans - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory

Welcome to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory, the only Lab in the world devoted to crimes against wildlife. This home page summarizes our capabilities, and is geared toward our prominent audiences: science professionals, special agents and wildlife inspectors, and students...

www.fws.gov

 

[nartreb]

...or non-migratory bird. Enforcement would be impossible otherwise.

The Feather Atlas - Feather Identification and Scans - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory

Welcome to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory, the only Lab in the world devoted to crimes against wildlife. This home page summarizes our capabilities, and is geared toward our prominent audiences: science professionals, special agents and wildlife inspectors, and students...

www.fws.gov

No, the statute very clearly states "migratory bird" and refers to various treaties for the definition of that term. 16 USC 703 . The Code of Federal Regulations includes a list of which birds are covered, you can see it here: 50 CFR 10.13 . (Splits and lumps within the list are automatically covered, in case you were wondering, but they update the list from time to time.)

(Interestingly, the original (1916) treaty with Canada (technically with Great Britain, but I digress) only covered certain bird families; hawks and owls were not on that list.)

Now, there are some species on the list that I would not consider "migratory" (e.g., some Hawaiian endemics, included because they belong to normally-migratory families), but the point is that there are many common nonmigratory birds not included in the treaties and therefore not covered by the statute. Search the list linked above for turkeys or grouse, for example.

 

[Butty]

Enforcement would be impossible otherwise.

Sounds as though enforcement is impossible!

 

[nartreb]

Sounds as though enforcement is impossible!

It might be difficult to get a conviction on the basis of a single feather, whose species might be hard to identify (in particular, if the possessor does not know the species (or rather, family) of the feather, prosecutors will have a problem establishing mens rea), but that was never the enforcement goal of that law. The primary motivation behind that part of the law is to remove any commercial incentive to go out and raid all your nearby colonies of wild birds for their feathers so you can sell them for use in hats or whatever: the hat becomes illegal to own, so its market value is very low. And the hatmaker and his supplier can be arrested on the basis of holding a big pile of suspicious feathers, regardless of whether investigators can find the rest of the birds' remains. It's really not that hard to ascertain whether a big bag of feathers came from a legal source: there will either be a large chicken coop on the hatmaker's property, or a paper trail of sales receipts.

 

[Butty]

So... people who come across a few feathers and fancy hanging on to them because they're pretty/interesting can do so without worrying

 

[nartreb]

I did not say that. They're putting themselves at risk. If they happen to attract the attention of an Interior Department agent, they could be facing arrest, which is quite a hassle in itself, and, if convicted, months of jail time and very large fines. It's somewhat unlikely to get that far, because throwing an otherwise harmless citizen into jail over a feather is not the kind of image the federal government wants to project, but you never know when you might run into a particularly antagonistic prosecutor. And there are plenty of people at additional risk. Immigrants can be deported over stuff like this, for example.

 

[Butty]

Quite. Though it would look shockingly racist to pick on (even illegal) immigrants for such a trivial matter.

 

[nartreb]

 

[Lifted]

You beat me to it, I actually did research yesterday and did find this feather very similar to Red Tail Hawk, quite literally my 2nd guess on what it was
My pattern goes into another direction.
I am not worried about such a law though, Red Tailed Hawks are pretty much a common bird here, and enforcing any kind of laws like that is nonsense in state of Arizona. Currently police can barely manage the crime, and they will literally refuse to come to some robberies in progress, it's that bad. We got bums fighting using knives in local McDonalds, and doing armed robberies for Spicy Chicken McCrispy. My friend who is a manager at McDonald's has been held at gun point in the store. Cops took like 2 hours to come.
The bright side of things is that we are open carry, and free to conceal carry.
Some of the crime gets mitigated by our own arms.
No one will care for a fancy bird feather, believe me.
Democrats ruined my state, but I digress.

Thank you, we both picked the right bird.