Like Christopher Robin, I have been “BISY” and there haven’t been as many updates to the blog recently as I’d have liked.
I found this feather while walking to the village the other day. I assume it’s a woodpecker feather, though I suppose it could belong to a hoopoe – we certainly see the abubilla more often than the pájaro carpintero, which I hear sometimes but catch sight of only on very rare occasions.
The feather markings made me think of the Spotted or Herbaceous Backson, although, of course, the Backson isn’t the only mythical beast that is spotted.
(From The Spotted Unicorn by Roger McGough, illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura.)
don't confuse the narrator 
QI, of Stephen Fry fame, tells us that the tiger has stripes all the way through. Not, as Mr. Kipling puts it, because the shadows were stained to his skin.
Do birds have the same with their feathers?
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I can’t picture what you mean by tiger stripes going ‘all the way through’. Or, more accurately, I can picture something I hope you don’t mean. Perhaps you mean all the way through to the skin, not subcutaneous stripes. I do seem to remember our tabbies having mottled bellies when they were shaved to be operated on, but I’m not 100% sure.
As for birds: certainly sparrow innards seem to be the same colour as those of robins, and mangled blue jays don’t have blue entrails. And all the chickens in the freezer at the supermarket are the same colour whatever the colour of their feathers. So I don’t think that beauty is more than feather deep.
Incidentally, I hope SF didn’t say that the shadows were stained on the tiger’s skin. Mr Kiping – who writes exceedingly good stories – said that the trees and the creepers of the jungle marked him as he was the one who had brought death to the jungle.
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I love the backson
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The spotted or herbaceous backson?
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