hey everyone
This is a sculpting exercise and a little particle experiment.
I’ll make the border between feathers and hair much smoother and improve the size of the feathers.
Here’s the current state:
that’s very interesting looking. I didn’t know you could do that with particles.
There are actually only three different particle systems with tweaked setting 
Here’s a little update, I felt like the feathers on his throat are weird so I deleted them and tweaked the feathers on the bird’s head a bit more
Almost reminds me of a character from Rio…
I didn’t think about that since I didn’t use any reference-photos, but yeah, there are similarities.
Anyway for me that’s absolutely a compliment, thanks! 
Such good surface texture! Makes me want to pet him. I understand your decision to remove the neck feathers, although they gave a great visual effect. Did you use clump settings for the hair to get that layered look?
thank you!
Yes, a little clump, and a little random, and combing the hair downwards made a huge difference.