GFF logo







   

The nature of feather construction

Feather Anatomy 101, continued

Barbules may or may not have attached to them structures collectively referred to as barbicels. Barbicels allow adjacent barbules to interlock or marry. They differ on the barbule in shape and function by location.

Barb and barbules
Distal barbules (those extending off the barb toward the feather tip) with barbicels have projecting structures at the base of the whip-like pennulum (distal half of the barbule) on the ventral (under) surface that are long and hooked, hooklets (hamuli,) with the remainder of the pennulum having shorter spines (ventral processes).

Proximal barbules (those extending off the barb toward the quill) tend to be more twisted than the distal barbules, and have a trough-shaped dorsal flange (groove) on the anterior (front) edge. As the hooklets of a distal barbule overlap the adjacent proximal barbule, the hooklets attach to the grooved edge while the spines stop the hooklets from sliding too far.

The diagonal cross-over of barbules creates a visible herringbone pattern. Both distal and proximal barbules have other lesser processes on the underside of the ribbon-like lamella referred to as ventral teeth and on the upper side of the whip-like pennulum referred to as dorsal cilium and spines. The hooklets and spines create the marriage of the adjacent barbs while the dorsal processes and ventral teeth catch the barbs and barbules of overlaying feathers to help maintain a solid, air-tight surface in flight. In turn the feather vane is maintained as not only air tight, but with some birds, a water tight structure. Barbicels is a collective term referring to all the processes that interlock to create the vane.

The shaft gives support while the vane (vexillum) or the web of a feather (which includes all the flat, expanded barbs, as well as any attached barbules, and barbicels) provides the surface for an airfoil in flight feathers and for covering and insulation in contour feathers. At the typical feather's base, the vane is downy and provides some insulation. This part of the vane is referred to as the plumulaceous vane.
The remaining portion of the vane is more firm and compactly arranged, and is referred to as the pennaceous vane. Feather types are often defined by the proportion of plumulaceous and pennaceous material present. Some feathers are strictly plumulaceous, others are strictly pennaceous, and others are both plumulaceous and pennaceous.

<<< Previous page (Feather anatomy 101) Next page (Tremendous variety) >>>


Want to comment this page? Fill out the form below.
Comment
Only comments
in English
are accepted!
Your name Your email
Notify me on new comments to this article on the above email-address.
You don't have to comment to start or stop notifications.
We excuse for any errors or inconvenience caused by this service, which has new features still in an experimental state. In case of faults, please notify Martin at martin@globalflyfisher.com, and explain the problem, and we will try to fix it as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience

All comments will be screened by the GFF staff before publication.
No HTML, images, ads or links, please - we do not publish such comments...
And only English language comments will be published.
Name and email is optional but recommended.
The email will be shown in a disguised form in the final comment to protect you against spam
You can see other public comments on this page

 
Did you find the above interesting?
People who looked at the above also looked at:

Tie Better

Section: Improve your fly tying and learn new, neat tricks with materials

Tour de France

GFF partner Martin Joergensen has let one of his favorite sports events, the bicycling race Tour de France, inspire a way of tying flies. He argues why tying many identical flies can be a good thing - and can be better than tying many different flies.

Hyperclomplete guide to fly tying

There are many intended uses for this guide, namely as reference to ensure you have a fairly complete compendium as to what you will need to get started in flytying or to use when dropping the perfect holiday gift hint. But more importantly, it is meant for the budding fly tyer, in hopes that the years of wisdom gained through trial and error from myself and my tying buddies will steer the newcomer down the right path

Hooks break

Hooks do break occasionally. It's a typical error when night fishing: you trust that everything is OK at the business end and just cast away
A few random articles for your entertainment

Global Flyisher Videos

OK, we know... it's not totally original, but since every other site out there seems to have a video page, we decided to have one too. After all our user's image gallery has been a huge success, so why not a video gallery? So, what we essentially do is gather the best fishing videos from all the different sources on the web. We don't host them, we just embed them and link to them, so this is really kind of an index. But that can be OK too, can't it? It's also a desperate measure to get some content to the site. We've been all too busy this year with tonnes other things than publishing on GFF... but that's a whole other story. For now we invite you to add fishing videos to this new part of the site. We'll review them as we do with all user submitted contributions. It filters out the worst spam.

December 10th 2009