You are right -- that's a count of feather curves (quills & barbs), not feathers. We do not model the barbules -- though there has been interesting work done i

You are right -- that's a count of feather curves (quills & barbs), not feathers. We do not model the barbules -- though there has been interesting work done in trying to calibrate a microfacet BRDF for feathers by tracing against barbule-level details.