Amazingness

Warner Road, London, SE5

When was the last time you played with a feather?

I found this one sticking out of a patch of grass; I think it once belonged to a pigeon. So I picked it up and have been playing with it.

Close-up, the structure is beautiful – delicate and perfectly stripy. I really wanted to hear the noise it makes when two stripes are pulled apart. It’s a sound I remember from childhood. It’s rather gentle, yet distinctive, very quiet and very lovely.

Each stripe is actually a very thin hair-like structure which is joined to its neighbouring stripes by incredibly tiny hooks. It works a bit like velcro.

And today, through my physical examination of this feather I discovered something new!

I had always thought that once the stripes were pulled apart it was impossible to put them back together, meaning that the feather was irreparably damaged and fairly useless for flying – a terrible state of affairs if it’s still being used by a bird.

But this is not the case at all. They stick right back together again, they just need to be brought together at the right angle.

I feel very relieved to have discovered this, and have been happily pulling the stripes apart and sticking them back together ever since!