Wilson's bird-of-paradise has unusual curled tail feathers. Serhan Oksay / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0. A fancy tail doesn’t have to be exceptionally long — it can also be exceptionally ...

So finding birds who actually have long tails required some care. Plus, not only did the feathers have to originate from the tail, but they had to be nearly as long as the bird’s body.

“I'm not given permission to misrepresent a bird,” McKoy said. “If a bird has 10 primary feathers, I put 10 primary feathers. And if he has 14 tail feathers, I will put 14 tail feathers.

Shimmery. Spiky. Shaggy. Soft. Feathers are what make birds so alluring—but these photographs remind us that they also tell a story about the science of evolution.

The long tail feathers of the adult males are more than half their length and give them... Scissor-tailed flycatcher acrobatic San Antonio Express-News Hearst Newspapers Logo ...

#5 House Finch. The house finch is another bird species that lives in South Carolina all year. Small, black oil sunflower seeds in bird feeders are known to attract them. Adult males are rosy red ...