Adventures in Eagle Territory: All About Feathers

hi thank you for joining us and for another night adventures in the Eagle territory my name is Tiffany poem and the avian care manager here for the National Eagle Center and today we are in our masters of the sky exhibit about our second floor of the National Eagle Center building and today we will be talking about feathers one of my favorite topics and so with me I have several different kinds of feathers off for us to talk about and so we have a primary window a secondary a tail feather but I bet a lot of you don't know a lot about these feathers what on earth makes a feather a feather so we're going to talk about that first so up here we have a diagram of eight feather and then we may recognize this central part as being known as a shaft we have a beef that go up on either side and that's actually one way that you can tell what kind of feather you are looking at for instance the difference between a primary several or look quite different on each side but something to is the fact that these things there are two parts and so we have bars we have bar bills and bar besides now that probably just sounds like a lot of ridiculousness but I'm going to show you the very important part about them so I have a feather here you might be able to see it on our microscope that we do have at the mass of this guy's of it I apologize you probably can't see a very all through the camera but if you ever get the chance to come here in person I promise it's a lot of fun but what we're sharing carries a feather that has been split apart and it is made to come back together just like velcro and so I got some belts right here of course you can pull it apart and you can put it right back together and it'll stick this feather is the same way it's pulled apart right now but because those barber cells they act like the bell curve and you can naturally put them back together and in fact a bird's beak is designed specifically to run over their feather and put it back together right thumb isn't quite as nice but you can see that that pole is no longer there and in fact it holds onto itself that feather is bending now it will eventually pull apart again don't worry it can just go right back together how amazing is that imagine if you had a rain jacket that every time it got a hole you could just rub it and put it right back together that's what a father does now with these feathers I mentioned that there's all different kinds and they all have an important function in fact this one that I'm holding right here is one of my favorites it might not be as showy as far as either the primary or the tail for the so many people recognize but this is home right here it's called an alula better and so this particular photo the reason I know it's called an allelic feather it's because of the unique shaft it actually bend this down and then comes back up into this dark now if I was a bird and I had a way these are all my others when I fold it up it folds up like this all my feathers name down this particular father would sit right here it's basically my thumb and the reason why this feather is so important is because this feather looks like the steering for the birth as they're flying off and actually steers them in the direction that they're going that's why this is so important on a bird now that means that all of our birds have quite a few of these feathers I have showed you several Falls eagle feathers and all of our birds have about 7,000 of these now you might be asking yourself what on earth do we do a 7,000 feather it's not from all but from each and every one of them and that's a great question so with these feathers we cannot keep some things to you that they don't drop them all at once we don't have a bunch of naked birds running around here that would be a little awkward they drop them over a few months it takes about three months to make any one of these you can kind of think of it as when you lost your teeth when you were a kid you kind of haven't bought another one was coming in it's the same thing only happens every year now what's super cool is that these feathers stay the same so for instance this primary flight feather it is a left-handed one if the bird were to lose let's say the number three primary on the left side within 24 to 48 hours it's gonna lose the same one on the other side and that is to say even during flight again they can't lose all these feathers at once they wouldn't be very successful at their job at surviving if they lost all their colors up on time so nature that's putting kind of that back-up plan they lose a couple they grow into ones over the next for a few months and they kind of keep that going and so with these feathers like I said our birds have over 7,000 of them wonderful two of them we actually collect every single one our words welcome and we simply hop to Colorado they go to the Eagle repository and that is that Vasily just outside of Denver Colorado where they actually collect these feathers from all over the United States and then they pass them back up to education facilities and in Native Americans who have applied for permits and so the reason why that's important to me to show you photos here is because they Americans useful for quite a few different things and so they use them for regalia is it for the nice photo here they also use it for ceremonial purposes and so Native Americans can apply for a permit and have these feathers sent Aqsa educational facilities can do the same thing so we can actually apply five minutes to keep our feathers as well or request new ones our birds are constantly dropping them so we actually send them off to the repository now something very interesting is up a couple co-workers Becky and Anna for those of you that recognize though names they are wonderful presenters and they do an excellent job here at the National Eagle Center they went to the Eagle repository if you want to go and they learn something very interesting so some of you may know again it is illegal to have one of these in your possession with adult educational or any American permit now when I say it's illegal I mean it comes up with a felony jail time and upwards of a $50,000 fine for one of these some of you might find that a little frankly ridiculous but we learned something very important from that stuff that Anna and Becky took mrs. the fact that poaching of Eagles is still happening it is still a problem and so what's happening is when you find this feather on the ground there is no way to know if you found it or if you took it and so because of that we don't know how that bird is doing and that is the reason why it is suggested that not only do you leave these alone if you find one don't even touch it leave it be take a photo of it admire it is amazing but please don't pick it up because even picking it up we don't know how long we've actually had it and so we don't want anyone to necessarily get in trouble now here's the fun fact how many of you knew that bald eagle or golden eagle feathers are not the only ones that are protected and in fact every single native species to North America is protected under these laws as well so that means it is actually illegal to have a robin's feather it is illegal to have a backyard bird feather a red tail feather Raptor feather and the reason is because we again don't know how you've got it we are trying to protect our birds and keep them safe here in our country and so that is why it is not ok to have any of them now that being said both of you might have seen turkey feathers are some duck feathers don't worry if you are a hunter your permit for hunting allows you to have those game feathers so that is ok you may have noticed that I have some color for this behind me these are present and turkey feathers that we have here as well alright everyone well I hope you got to learn something here at the National Eagle Center I want to thank you so much for joining us for another adventures in the Eagle territory and we hope to see you again

Channel: NationalEagleCenter

Views: 562

Rating: 4.7142859 out of 5

Keywords: bald eagle, eagle, educational, eagle eggs, DDT, environmental education, experiment, fun, National Eagle Center, kid friendly

Id: mcF-RKgQZqM

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 31 2020