A bird-feather-inspired herringbone riblet texture was investigated for turbulent drag reduction. The texture consists of blade riblets in a converging/diverging or herringbone pattern with spanwise wavelength f . The aim is to quantify the drag change for this texture as compared to a smooth wall and to study the underlying mechanisms. To that purpose, direct numerical simulations of turbulent flow in a channel with height L z were performed. The FukagataIwamoto-Kasagi identity for drag decomposition was extended to textured walls and was used to study the drag change mechanisms. For f /L z ࣡ O(10), the herringbone texture behaves similarly to a conventional parallel-riblet texture in yaw: the suppression of turbulent advective transport results in a slight drag reduction of 2%. For, the drag increases strongly with a maximum of 73%. This is attributed to enhanced mean and turbulent advection, which results from the strong secondary flow that forms over regions of riblet convergence/divergence. Hence, the employment of convergent/divergent riblets in the texture seems to be detrimental to turbulent drag reduction.