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FEATHER STUFF:   Feathers start out as a little spike-like straw. The feather grows out of this.  The “spike tube” is shed after the feather comes completely out of it.   If you trim one of these feathers before it is fully grown,  it will start to bleed.

FEATHER STUFF:   All feathers grow from molecules that cells get from the liver.  Feathers are literally liver parts. 

CLEANING FEATHERS!:   Most birds have a layer of down feathers that traps warm air and keeps it by the skin. Although most birds that grow down feathers molt or shed them eventually, some birds including parrots, herons and white egrets, also have a special type of down feather that is never molted and never stops growing.

CLEANING FEATHERS!:   Instead of molting these down feathers, the tips of the feathers break off bit-by-bit into tiny bits of powder.  The birds spread this powder throughout their feathers and it cleans their feathers!

STRUCTURAL COLORS:   There are some feathers which have different kinds of structures.  These take incoming white light and destroy some of the light.  This gives the feathers the colors we see.

STRUCTURAL COLORS:    One side of a peacock feather is brown from molecules of the suntan protein, rhodopsin.  This molecule also coats the inside of our eyeballs.  These molecules block light from going through the feather barbules like black paint would block the light. If you flip the brown side of the feather over, you can see its brilliant colors. 

STRUCTURAL COLORS:    Robert Hooke (1665), the first user of the reflecting telescope, and Isaac Newton were the first to realize that the colors were not in the feather, but in the light that reflected off it.

STRUCTURAL COLORS:    Each peacock eye feather has over one million keratin barbule mirrors. When white light hits these multi-layered mirrors, the mirrors reflect the light back on itself.  This destroys certain colors and amplifies others by something called negative and positive interference.

STRUCTURAL COLORS:   Each of the million flat ribbon-shaped barbule multi-level mirrors of the peacock has precise widths of layers from 300-1500 nm.  These cancel the right colors to give each part of the feather its distinct color.  The colors are made from amplifying and destroying light. The peacock feathers have no color but green in them!

STRUCTURAL COLORS:   When the peacock feather is being built in the shaft, each of these mirror types is made at precise locations on each barbule. This gives each peacock feather its heart shape and other shapes of reflected color which makes the peacock eye feather one of the most stunning feathers in the world!