Talk:birds of the feather flock together

Is this even an accepted form? I only know of "birds of a feather", meaning birds with the same feathers. What is "birds of *the* feather" supposed to mean? --Rubseb (talk) 11:15, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think the meaning is any different judging from the 15 uses I found at Google Books (compared to Google's (unreliable) count of 147K for the "a" form). We often have alternative forms of words and only require "attestation" (See WT:ATTEST.). It is possible that we should have a different standard for proverbs, but I doubt that it would be worth the vote. DCDuring TALK 13:49, 3 April 2013 (UTC)