I often see seagulls fly directly into a fierce wind, sometimes hardly flapping their wings. How is that even possible?
In: 0
Sorry, for some reason accidentally tagged this NSFW.
Birds flap their wings to propel themselves forward or to increase the height at which they fly.
When flying against a fast enough wind, they can simply adjust slightly the inclination of the wings to match their weight and let the wind do the rest. Basically they are gliding, but since the wind matches the glide speed, they appear still to someone on the ground.
If they don’t do anything though, the will start to move backwards with the wind. So what they do is to give one wing stroke once in a while to recover the lost energy.
They are taking advantage of how stationary wing aerodynamics works. If air flows over a wing, it creates lift. This is exactly how a plane flies. If there is a strong enough headwind, a plane sitting stationary will be lifted off the ground.
If the seagull wants to move backwards, it can angle up, if it wants to move forward, it can angle down, if it wants to gain height, it can flap.
Imagine a seagull in still air gliding. If it is moving fast enough it can just glide and not have to flap. This is the same situation, but the air is moving instead of the seagull.
It way seem weird to us on the ground, but the seagull is flying relative to the air. If we were on the seagulls back and couldn’t see the ground, we wouldn’t be able to tell if the seagull was flying or the wind was blowing. If we were a dust particle in the air and couldn’t see the ground, we wouldn’t be able to tell if thr seagull was flying or if the wind was blowing.
Seabirds are *very* powerful flyers even by bird standards. They can weather fierce arctic sea storms and fly for thousands of miles without rest.
A windy day in Indiana is barely an inconvenience.
They have very long and streamlined wings to provide significant lifting and flight power, at the expense of agility. If you ever see a particularly aggravated seagull at full extension, their wingspan is 5+ feet on a bird that’s barely a foot tall.
They’re gliding. Air moving over their wings is what keeps them up, so a good headwind is all they need to stay aloft. This is why airplanes prefer to take off into the wind.
Basically they are flying like a airplane does. Motion is relative it doesn’t matter if a wing is moving through the air or if the air is moving over the wing from our perspective. Birds flap their wings to move through the air faster and that generates lift but if the air is moving toward them they don’t need to flap to get the same effect.
This can also be observed with a kite. In a windy day you can just stand there and they work great. On a not so windy day you need to run with the kite to get it flying.
Air moves! We can’t see it, but it’s not much different than a river, which we can see.
When a bird is stationary to the ground, it means they’re flying the same speed as the wind.
If you imagine the sky is a river of air and the ground the riverbank, it isn’t that much different from watching a fish swim upstream. It makes sense when you can see them swim against the moving water even if they look like they’re stationary in the water.
Birds are the same but since we can’t see the wind we think they’re hovering.
Latest Answers