Take a look at Darryl Stinton's book "The design of the aeroplane" - there
is a captioned picture in the front of it showing a gull (an Albatross, I
think) soaring a cliff in front of the camera. The caption points out
aerodynamic function of various parts of the birds anatomy in a most
enlightening manner! I don't have the book in my possession right now (I
loaned it to the CFI of a local club, I should get it back I suppose) or I
would post the picture and it's caption.

Rgds,

Derrick Steed
On 4 Jul 2004 20:39:04 GMT, Andy Blackburn
wrote:

Any bird experts out there?

While still in India I met a German lass who was an ornithologist and
in India do a PhD on vultures. Naturally, I asked her about their
flight performance. She just looked at me like I was a dinosaur: she
knew nothing and cared less about their flight performance or
operating methods. All she was interested in was stuff like population
densities, diet and their behaviour when not flying. I found her
attitude most odd.

That was 25 years ago so things, hopefully, might have improved in
ornithological circles.

So, pick your bird expert carefully before asking about how birds fly.

BTW, a good book about flight in general (literally from insects to
747s) is 'The Simple Science Of Flight' by Henk Tennekes. It won't
tell you how raptors find lift but has a good analysis of how flying
creatures size and weight affect their way of making a living and vice
versa. Besides, any book on flight that can sensibly show everything
from a Monarch Butterfly to a 747-400 on the same graph can't be all
bad!