Good morning afternoon and evening all (depending on your timezone!)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this question but here goes anyway!

I'm planning a short film where the main character is a parrot. My problem is i'm fairly new to Maya and I have two effects that I need for the story:

1) Dynamic feathers on the parrot that move when the parrot moves, get effected by forces etc

2) Allowing the feathers to get wet in a rain shower or puddle.

Does anyone know how to do this or where I can find a decent tutorial (or if it's completely impossible to achieve!)? I've tried looking this up on google etc but i keep finding something about feathering which is totally different!

All the best

Simon