Educate Yourself About Birds Different Flying Patterns
Learn about birds in flight
Looking at a bird flying across the sky you soon realize that their bodies are designed for flight and speed, and the lightness and controlled muscular strength makes them perfect for ruling the skies. This way of moving around, especially in great amounts of speed, takes a lot of energy; therefore birds must consume plenty of food to keep them airborne.
Economy has become of the essence, and when ever it is possible for a bird to glide instead of flapping its wings, it will do so to considerably reduce their energy spending. For example, when a bird like the hawk, and the falcon are circling, scanning for food they will circle on outstretched wings using winds from rising air they find over wide open fields. Other birds like wrens and mallards must flap their wings continually to stay airborne which make them more likely to feed on the ground more often.
Birds will also save energy through gliding when they are traveling long distances, but there are smaller birds like the finches and chickadees which cannot take advantage of rising winds (thermals). Instead they will use something called “bounding” flight where they fold their wings between bouts of flapping to reduce drag in their ever lasting quest to conserve energy.
A bird must also master the technique of take-off and flight control, and if you watch a birds take-off from a standing start you will notice the wings are swept back and forth to create an airflow over the take-off surface, and than with deep wing beats will generate enough air to hover for a second and then leap into the air. You will notice that larger birds will sometimes have a running start before take-off, while other birds might choose to leap off a perch, quickly spread their wings and let gravity do its work.
When a bird is landing it must carefully lose as much speed as possible, not to tumble form the air, and smaller birds will accomplish a gentle touch-down by gradually slowing down until they are hovering on whirring wings. Larger birds has two choices of either swoopinglightly below their intended perch, and then climb to lose some speed, or try to land on the ground with a light thump and then run a few short steps to lose some of the momentum.
Looking into some birds that have similar body shapes, does not necessarily mean that they have the same flight patterns. For example, the swallows will often fly close to the ground, and use a less energy saving flapping flight, and also use their long tails to aid their flexible maneuvers which allows them to capture large and fast insects. The similar looking swift will use a different flight pattern when hunting which consist of circling in the air, while alternating between bursts of flickering wing beats and long glides.
Birds also have at least two or three different air speeds when in flight, lets say that a bird which normally has a flight speed of20mph (32km), but during migration it will have a speed on an average of 25mph (40km). But when this bird is running from a predator, it can get up to speeds as high as 30mph (49km).
Here is some other bird’s average flight speed / hour that might interest you:
European Starling 20mph (32km) White-crowned Sparrow 44mph (71km)
Winter Wren 20mph (32km) Herring Gull 25mph (40km)
Pheasant 34mph (55km) Mallard 42mph (68km)
Great Blue Heron 27mph (44km) Common Eider 47mph (75km)
Barn Swallow 20mph (32km) Petegrine Falcon
(when stooping) 224mph (360km)
