These are image close-ups of a feather. This specific strand comes from one single strand that comes out of the feather’s stalk. We can observe that the small strands that are coming out of the main strand are the interlocking barbules that hold the larger feather strands together.

This sample was taken from a feather down that fell out of a puffer vest that I own in my room. I obtained this while I was in my room at Caltech on May 28, 2019 at 3:30 PM. The feather was poking out of my vest, so I simply took it off with a tweezer and directly transferred onto a slide and slipped a dry slip over it. #caltechbi1