Wing Feather Moult Data for New Zealand Passerines

Feather mass data provides a proxy for plumage maintenance investment across 18 native New Zealand passerine species. Santi Guallar compiled this dataset by pairing each species with a surrogate Palearctic species of similar body size to estimate wing-feather masses. The data was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between habitat openness and moult extent using the moulted feather mass metric.
• Compare moult investment, proxied by mass of moulted wing-feathers, across different passerine species.
• Investigate the occurrence of moulted primaries as an indicator of moult stage or strategy.
• Study plumage maintenance by correlating feather mass data with environmental factors like UV exposure.

Strengths

• Data covers 18 distinct New Zealand passerine species.
• Includes detailed feather mass data for upper-wing coverts, alula feathers, and remiges.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• Dataset is very small at 43.6 KB, indicating limited sample size.
• Wing-feather masses are surrogated from Palearctic species, not direct measurements.
• Temporal coverage and exact row count are unknown.

Provenance

Source

Santi Guallar via figshare.

Collection Method

Feather mass calculated from moult scores and surrogate species data; moult data gathered from field studies.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

New Zealand.