Human beings have coveted the flying ability of birds for all the ages. We have long dreamed of soaring in the sky like a bird. Flight took us a very long time to realize, through the tireless tinkering and vision of some very creative risk takers. We have in many ways dominated the sky with our hot air balloons, airplanes, and helicopters, but we still get the sense that we can never truly fly free like birds. A human race that flies by some means of generating its own power and drastic modification of the dermis and appendages is pure science fiction. As masters of technology we have created some really amazing flying machines. But how do our marvelous inventions compare to the aerial ability of birds? Not surprisingly birds put our machines to shame in many ways.
Have you ever heard of a flying machine that can go from full speed ahead to a complete stop in a split second? Birds do that and they can do to the extent of coming to rest on a perch that is in motion. The closest we get is landing fighter jets on aircraft carriers, which is really impressive, but not on the level of a bird’s abilities. This is nothing to be ashamed of though, after all, we owe the very idea of flight to birds. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first great thinkers to really ponder the intricacies of flight. He started something that continues to this day and there are now many groups of scientists studying the details of avian flight using all sorts of high tech gadgets and trying to unravel the basic mysteries of the physics, physiology, and functional morphology of flight. This type of research employs such things as wind tunnels, lasers, high-speed photography and video, X-ray machines, and an array of tiny sensors. It’s impossible to pick a single top gun flyer from all birds because no single bird has it all.
Hummingbirds can fly every which way, so surely they take the crown when it comes to pure maneuverability. A hummingbird can also hover in one place for about an hour and half, something no other bird can do. The Peregrine Falcon is the clear winner when it comes to all out speed. It has been clocked at over 180 mph in a steep dive. Super sonic jets and rockets go faster, but is that really a fair comparison? Another hard comparison to make is when it comes to endurance flying. The top avian enduro is the Bar-tailed Godwit. In one case, a female was recorded to have flown a distance of 7,145 miles from Alaska to New Zealand. The journey lasted 9 days and the bird never stopped flying to eat or drink or rest. Compare that to the longest airplane flight when two pilots stayed airborne in a Cessna 172 for almost 65 days straight in 1958/1959 …of course, they had to refuel in the air and occasionally retrieve provisions from a moving vehicle on the ground. We humans are pretty darn good flyers and we are smart enough to know that birds still have a lot to teach us.
