Afterfeather

It’s June, which means #30DaysWild and I am always grateful to it for motivating me to go out and notice more than normal. On day 1 I found a little feather on the Union canal towpath (route 75) – one half grey, one half white, with a fluffy base and a slight bend to the left. It motivated me to open my Bird Biology Handbook again and get back to where I’d stopped studying…chapter 4 ‘Feathers and Plumages’. I think my little feather is a contour feather, but what from? Maybe a gull? I’ve noticed the speculum feather patches on the local mallards too, which vary from blue to teal to lilac, depending on what angle and what light you catch them. The chapter promises to tell me more about this – about iridescence, disruptive colouration and the sad-sounding ‘structural blues’, but in the meantime it is gifting me pleasing words like ‘plumulaceous’ and ‘afterfeather’. More exploring to be done on this, I think - both outside and in.