Hawk Feather Identification and the Eagle Feather Law

Raptor flight feathers are stiff, broad and usually barred crosswise: dark bands running across a paler ground, repeated the length of the vane. That pattern separates them at once from the plain black of a crow, the iridescent sheen of a grackle and the fine speckling of a sparrow.

Use the shape to place the feather on the bird first. Primaries usually have pointed tips; secondaries have rounded or squared ends and often a curved shaft. Tail feathers grade from strongly asymmetrical at the outside of the tail to symmetrical in the middle, with the central pair usually exactly symmetrical and straight-shafted.

On large raptors, the outer primaries are strongly emarginated, narrowing sharply near the tip on the front vane. That narrowing is what produces the separated fingers you see at the wingtip of a soaring buteo, and it is a good sign you are holding a big soaring bird's feather rather than a gamebird's.

Tail feathers carry more species information than wing feathers, because hawk tails are patterned differently between species while their barred primaries look much alike.

• [Red-tailed Hawk](/lookup/ducks-and-raptors/red-tailed-hawk): adults have a reddish-brown tail, usually with a single narrow dark band near the tip. Western birds vary widely, from pale to rust-brown to blackish, and the birds Audubon calls Harlan's Hawks have whitish tails with dark marbling.
• [Red-shouldered Hawk](/lookup/ducks-and-raptors/red-shouldered-hawk): narrow black and white bands on the flight feathers of both wings and tail, many of them.
• [Broad-winged Hawk](/lookup/ducks-and-raptors/broad-winged-hawk): broad tail bands on adults, narrow ones with a thicker terminal band on juveniles.
• Rough-legged Hawk: white at the base with dark banding at the tip.
• [Cooper's Hawk](/lookup/ducks-and-raptors/coopers-hawk) and [Sharp-shinned Hawk](/lookup/ducks-and-raptors/sharp-shinned-hawk): banded tails, with a wider white band at the tip on Cooper's.

Measure before you guess. The Feather Atlas gives total feather length and vane length for every scan, along with the age, sex and locality of the specimen, so a measurement in millimetres is worth more than an impression of size.

Bald and Golden Eagles are covered by their own statute. The Bald Eagle Protection Act was passed in 1940 and amended in 1962 to include golden eagles, and it prohibits taking, transporting, selling, bartering and possessing eagles or their parts without a permit.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service runs a National Eagle Repository, which serves as the national collection and distribution point for the remains of deceased bald and golden eagles received from federal, tribal, state and local officials. The Service states that it receives 3,000 or more eagles each year, and that only enrolled members of federally recognized Native American Tribes aged 18 or older are eligible to receive the remains. Law requires the remains of deceased bald and golden eagles to be sent to the Repository, with limited exceptions.

So a found eagle feather is not a keepsake. Leave it, and report a dead eagle to federal, tribal or state wildlife authorities. The Repository can be reached at (303) 287 2110 or repository@fws.gov.

Hawks, falcons, owls and vultures are native migratory birds, so their feathers fall under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The USFWS Feather Atlas states that possession of feathers and other parts of native North American birds without a permit is prohibited, and that there is no exemption for molted feathers or for those taken from road-killed or window-killed birds.

The exceptions it lists are the feathers of legally hunted waterfowl and other migratory gamebirds, and use of feathers by Native Americans. Educational and research use requires a permit.

One practical consequence: a hawk feather in a classroom, a craft project or a hat band is not in a legal grey area, it is simply not allowed without a permit. The Atlas itself exists partly because the Service's own officers need to identify feathers in enforcement cases.

Photograph it where it lies. Put a ruler or a coin beside the shaft in the same frame, shoot straight down on a plain background, and take a second frame of the other face. That is enough for the app to work from and enough to compare against the Feather Atlas later, and nothing is collected.

If the feather is attached to a dead bird, do not handle the bird with bare hands. Use gloves or an inverted bag, wash your hands thoroughly afterwards, and report a dead eagle or an unusual cluster of dead birds to your state wildlife agency. If you become unwell after handling a wild bird, see a doctor and say what you handled.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's forensics laboratory published a guide for wildlife officers in June 2014, "Identification of Bald and Golden Eagle Feathers" by Pepper W. Trail. Its marks, in summary:

• Adult Bald Eagle wing feathers: plain dark gray or gray-brown, sometimes with a very small whitish patch at the base, and never marbled or patterned.
• Adult Bald Eagle tail feathers: pure white. Golden Eagle feathers are never all white.
• Adult Golden Eagle: chocolate-brown feathers with marbling, curved or irregular pale patches, spots and bars. Marbling is never seen on Bald Eagle feathers.
• Golden Eagle outer primaries: the outer three to five are plain grayish-brown with almost black tips and cannot usually be told from a Bald Eagle's without reference specimens.
• Young Bald Eagle: mottled, "mud-spattered" feathers, with white areas blotched and speckled and often sitting mid-feather or near the tip.
• Young Golden Eagle: a solid, largely pure white patch rising from the base, with a dark tip. The yearling tail feathers are the most prized eagle feathers for headdresses, Trail notes.

Both species reach full adult plumage by about their fifth year. An eagle has 10 primaries, about 14 secondaries and 12 tail feathers.

Size separates them first. Trail gives eagle flight feathers as almost always 10 in (26 cm) or longer, with even the shortest secondaries at least 8 in (20 cm), and states that all North American hawks, including the Osprey, are much smaller than Bald and Golden Eagles. Almost all of those hawks also show barring or other patterns that differ from either eagle.

The one hawk whose feathers are used to imitate eagle is the Rough-legged Hawk. Some forms have pale tail feathers with dark tips, like a young Golden Eagle's, but they are 8-10 in (22-25 cm) long against 12-15 in (30-38 cm) for Golden Eagle.

So measure. A flight feather under 8 in is not an eagle's; a plain or marbled feather over 10 in may be, and should be left where it is.

Trail's guide lists the feathers most often mistaken for or sold as eagle, and the test for each:

• Dyed white domestic turkey: by far the most common fake. The dyed part is unnaturally uniform; the shaft has fine lines on top and a broad U-shaped groove underneath, and the feather arches when seen edge-on. Eagle shafts are plain with only a narrow V-shaped groove. See turkey feather identification.
• Turkey and Black Vultures: plain dark wing feathers, but smaller, with pale shafts that contrast strongly with the vanes, most obviously underneath.
• Geese and swans: a shiny waxy layer (tegmen) on the underside of the primaries along the shaft, never present on eagles.
• Great Blue Heron: slate blue, paler and less brown than Bald Eagle, smaller, without the long finger-like tips.
• Common Raven: truly black, often with a blue sheen; eagle feathers are dark gray or brown but never truly black.
• Condors: larger than eagles, with primaries of 17-27 in against 12-21 in for eagles.

No. The federal eagle protection statute, 16 U.S.C. 668, prohibits anyone from taking, possessing, selling, purchasing or bartering Bald or Golden Eagles or their parts, or offering to do so, without authorization. Buying one is therefore not a legal way to get an eagle feather, whoever is selling it.

The lawful route runs through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Eagle Repository, which distributes eagle remains, parts and feathers to enrolled members of federally recognized Native American Tribes for religious and cultural use through a permit process. The Repository receives far more Bald than Golden Eagles each year, so the wait for Golden Eagle items runs considerably longer than for Bald Eagle items.

If you are offered eagle feathers for sale, or find a dead eagle, report it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or your state wildlife agency.