Definition of "featherless"

He eyed me with contempt: great featherless, half winged bird as I was, incomprehensible, contemptible, but awful.

1911, D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, London: Heinemann, page 128

[…] clad in a featherless hat and somber black garments, which set off the dark pallor of his forbidding face.

1929 June, Robert E. Howard, “Rattle of Bones”, in Weird Tales