I feel obliged to mention to my many skilled, observant avian watching and drawing friends that I know feathers don’t work like that, but it’s just the way they happened.
Another thing I’m learning from #inktober (and also cleaning up coloring pages) is that I’m not very good at keeping paper clean. I let my cat step on the drawing, and forget to shield the drawing when I rest my hand on the page. Eventually I’m going to have to learn Photoshop, if only to clean up my spots!