This guide teaches birders to use the characteristics of wing types and feather morphology to identify feathers - not only by species but also by their place on the bird's body. The introductory chapters give a detailed overview of the feather - how feathers developed, the parts of a single feather, and the variety of types of feathers on a bird. In the feather identification section, over 400 colour photographs show feather samples from 379 bird species from all over North America. Along with the wing type of the species and a map showing its range, several types of feathers are included for each bird; each feather is labelled with its type and its size.