In Series 8 of Britain’s Got Talent, the audience was shocked by the Canadian illusionist Darcy Oake, who performed several magic tricks with doves. In one of them, the magician makes a pigeon appear from a burnt feather.

How did he do it?
Easy.
The feather that Darcy showed us before lightning it up is actually a piece of special paper known as flash paper.
It is commonly used by magicians when they wish to create quick large flashes of fire in order to hide brisk moments of illusion from the audience. That’s exactly what Darcy did — using the fire, he quickly got the pigeon from a secret pocket in his sleeve.