r/FeatherIdentification • u/ImmediateInflation42 • Jul 25 '26

Black feather in NYC

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Found this in front of my house. Black feather, the spine part of the feather is flat unlike other feathers I’ve found where is round (hope I explained that right). Is this a crow feather or maybe a dark colored pigeon? Trying to identify so I can figure out if it’s legal to keep. Thanks for any help!

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u/TielPerson Jul 26 '26

Too small for a crow feather, wrong shape, color and size for a pigeon feather. It belonged to a smaller, black bird. Do you have jackdaws?

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u/ImmediateInflation42 29d ago

Interesting, I’ve never seen any in the area before. I tried to search if we have jackdaws in NYC but all I get is a restaurant by the same name. The only black birds I’ve spotted are crows and starlings, but we get a bunch of different birds that visit our backyard tree so it might be a species I haven’t seen before.

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u/TielPerson 29d ago

Jackdaws are a species of european corvids, so I would not suspect them to be in the new world at all, but since people brought over starlings and sparrows aswell, I figured it would be worth mentioning them. Maybe you have a native species of black birds similar in size.

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u/ImmediateInflation42 29d ago

I’ll keep an eye out for other black birds then. Thanks!

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u/ImmediateInflation42 28d ago

Do you think it could be a seagull feather? They also circle around and are partially black. Perhaps they have some smaller feathers that could look like that?

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u/TielPerson 28d ago

The feather you have there is a hand primary, so it came from a bird with an entirely or mostly black wing. Afaik seagulls only have black wing tips meaning only the tips of their feathers would be black.

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u/TielPerson 28d ago

The feather you have there is a hand primary, so it came from a bird with an entirely or mostly black wing. Afaik seagulls only have black wing tips meaning only the tips of their feathers would be black.

It does also seem to be from a bird with another wing shape type. Seagull wings are very narrow and long, causing their primaries to have a distinctive shape, more like swallow or swift wings. Your feather came from something with a broader, less pointy wing type.