Eli5. Seagulls and other seabirds appear to defy physics when flying against the wind.

Question

I often see seagulls fly directly into a fierce wind, sometimes hardly flapping their wings. How is that even possible?

In: 0

Answer 1

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.