Certainly the beauty of a bird depends most on its feathers, being not even skin-deep, as you may well believe, if you ever noticed a chicken Mammy Bun had plucked.

But, Nat, how can feathers make a bird lighter, when every one of them weighs something, and a bird has to carry them all?
They make a bird a little heavier than it would be without them.

Yet it is quite true that no bird could fly if you clipped its wings.

So some of its feathers enable it to fly--the large ones, that grow on the wings.

Then, too, the large ones that make the tail help the bird to fly, by acting like a rudder to steer with.