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Welcome to the website of the Featherguide Organisation.

The Featherguide Organisation endeavours to unite all individuals and institutions who hold scientific feather collections. First and foremost among the feather-holding institutions is the Naumann Museum in Köthen, Germany, which is named after the famous ornithologist Johann Friedrich Naumann. The Naumann Museum houses the largest scientific feather collection of the world, which was built up by the former museum director Dr. Wolf-Dieter Busching. Dr. Busching himself was a scientific collaborator in the Feather Research Group, which was established in 1972 by Wilfried Hansen.

The first collective work of the Feather Research Group is the book titled “The Tail Feathers of the Birds of Central Europe”. The book was published by Federfuehrer Publishers and is available from NHBS (www.nhbs.com).

In the long term, our goal is to create an encyclopaedia on the feathers of all bird species of the world – a World Feather Atlas. The project World Feather Atlas was presented to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the year 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, and was discussed by IUCN’s world heritage team. Our project received its name “World Atlas of Feathers” directly from IUCN.

The Feather Research Group meets once a year at the Naumann Museum to coordinate the work on the World Feather Atlas. Together with our project partners abroad, the following website on the topic of feather research have been created so far, which depict the feathers of about 10% of the bird species of our planet:

http://www.gefiederkunde.de
http://www.vogelfedern.de
http://www.featherbase.info
http://www.federn.org
http://www.federkunde.storchenhof-papendorf.de/
http://www.michelklemann.nl/verensite/start/index.html
http://www.ornithos.de/Ornithos/Feather_Collection/Feather_Collection.htm#Top
http://www.alulawebsite.com/
http://forumpiora.feen.pl/
http://feathersinblack.com/
http://sokolarskicentar.eu/projekti/atlas-pera-ptica-feather-atlas/
https://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas/