Wings are amazing. Marvels of engineering, with intricate and changeable color patterns, they offer endless avenues for study. But seeing the details of a wing in the field can be extremely difficult. Feathers are constantly shifting across each other, the wings are moving up and down, in and out, and the bird is usually traveling at high speed. That is why having a collection of spread wing specimens can be extremely useful, and luckily the Slater Museum at the University of Puget Sound has created just such a collection.
I’ve selected a few wings here for a quiz to test your knowledge of wing patterns and shapes. In the future I plan to create more wing quizzes and cover wing structure and pattern in more detail using images from this collection.
With special thanks to the online wing collection of the Slater Museum of Natural History, University of Puget Sound, for providing such an awesome resource and for allowing me to use some photos here.
Wings
Question 1 |
Belted Kingfisher | |
Loggerhead Shrike | |
Blue Jay | |
Black-throated Blue Warbler |
Question 2 |
Blue Jay | |
Belted Kingfisher | |
Black-throated Blue Warbler | |
Black-billed Magpie |
Question 3 |
Belted Kingfisher | |
Red-bellied Woodpecker | |
Blue Jay | |
Black-throated Blue Warbler |
Photos from the online wing collection of the Slater Museum of Natural History, University of Puget Sound
Nice! I use the Slater site for class presentations a lot. It’s wonderful resource.
This worked for me thru your website. 3 for 3. It didn’t work for me from the link on Facebook? I got to the quiz, but it marked all questions wrong?
Weird! I’ll look into that. If anyone else has a similar problem let me know.
Thanks so much for all that you do (bird books, blog, talking, these quizzes ect.). I was unaware of the Slater site, super great resource. The quizzes are sure helping with my bird feature terminology. Thanks so much. Looking forward to more on wings.
I particularly like how these shots show the different wing shape so clearly. I still need to know more about how wing shape influences flight styles.
Thanks Gretchen. I will work on a post or two on the relationship between wing shape and flight style.