Thanks for the suggestions. I've tried them all, except for the harpoon. Nice idea. I spent over 6 hours yesterday hunting for feathers. I scoured the village ruins in the meadows (found a few), searched for dungeons in the black forest, got maybe 20 after doing 3 dungeons, shot every bird I saw, which wasn't many. I came home with only about 30 feathers for all that effort. That is just way too much of a grind for such an important item. Why can't we buy feathers from the trader? That would be a stellar idea. Right now I would give all the gold I have for a stack of feathers.

At the beginning of the game, I got feathers all the time when cutting trees...no nearby birds. I'm in the middle of a building project right now and have cut down hundreds of trees, with barely a drop of feathers. We had so many feathers we were tossing them when our inventories were full (my husband plays with me, btw). I'm kicking myself now that I can't find them.