|
Region:
|
Jump to :
| View
All Lists | FAQ
|
|
|
Date: 10/28/24 1:06 pm
From: Jim Betz via Tweeters <tweeters...>
Subject: [Tweeters] Bird Behavior - "Keeping a level head" |
Hi,
A while back I posted about how I'd noticed that some sandpipers at
Channel Drive
were keeping their heads level in tight turns where the body and wings
were essentially
in the vertical plane ("on their side").
On our recent trip to Cape May I took a lot of pictures of various
species in flight
and it seems like pretty much all birds do this "all the time" (head
'parallel' to the
ground even if body and/or wings are not. Here's an interesting pic of
an Osprey
taken right after it began a dive ...
https://eamon.smugmug.com/Family-pics-from-jim/Birds-and-Stuff-from-Jim/n-4Cw3NF/Cape-May/i-hLnmXQS/A
... and what I notice is that the bird has rotated its entire body so
the underside is 'up' and
the head is 'normal'. If you think about how an Osprey dives into the
water after a fish
this makes a lot of sense because it can keep focused on the fish and
adjust its flight path
for the target (fish).
I went back and looked at flight pics of eagles, hawks, owls, gulls
and even passerines - and in
every case where the body/wings were off level - the head was still
"level" (not necessarily
'precisely level' level but definitely 'essentially level').
So, this seems like an additional feature of having a relative long
neck and a head that can
easily rotate relative to the shoulders/body/wings.
- Jim
_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
<Tweeters...>
http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
|
| |
|
 |
Join us on Facebook! |
|
