Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1910 — FLIGHT OF BIRDS. [ARTICLE]

FLIGHT OF BIRDS.

Rapid Wing Movement Doea Not Always Imply Speed. Birds have different modes of flight, just as men have different gaits in walking on running. Rapid wing movement does not always imply speed In flight any more than rapid leg movement implies speed in walking or running. With us it is the length of the stride that tells ultimately. What, apart from wing movement, tells in the bird’s flight is not known. Speaking broadly, long winged birds are strong and swift fliers; short winged birds are feeble in flight. When we consider that a cumbrous, slow moving bird like the heron moves its wings twice per second when in flight it is evident that many birds have a very rapid wing movement. Most small birds have this rapid wing movement with feeble powers of flight The common wren and the dipper, for Instance, have a flight like that of a young bird. Many of our smaller migrants seem but to flit from bush to bush or from tree to tree. Members of the thrush family are low fliers, thte blackbird in particular, with its hasty, hurried flight, often just avoiding fences and no more. Wagtails have a beautiful undulating flight with little apparent use of their wings. They look like greyhounds bounding through the air. Nearly all birds sail or float occasionally without the slightest movement of their wings. Even a large bird like a pheasant will glide in this way for more than two hundred yards. Grouse have a rapid wing motion without any great speed, but when they sail, coming down with the wind, as they prefer to do, they go very fast. Before alighting they flap their wings several times very rapidly, like the clapping of hands. • Most birds after gliding do this. Does it correspond to putting on the brakes or reversing the engine in the case of mechanical locomotion? With little apparent use of Its wings the wood pigeon flies' very strongly and rapidly. It never seems to "bring up” much before alighting, but crashes into a tree at full speed. When it rises its wings crack like pistol shots. Ducks are strong on the wing and often fly in single file. Geese will fly wedge or arrowhead shape, generally at a considemble height. So do many gulls and other sea birds, in a stately, measured fashion, their calls occasionally sounding like “Left, right, left, right.” Kestrels have a beautiful, clean cut, clipping motion of their wings and look like yachts sailing through the air, while their hovering in the air is one of the mysteries of bird life. Peesweeps, which are so graceful in their motions on the ground, look like enormous bats when in flight. Swallows and In a very marked degree swifts have rapid wing movement with great speed and extraordinary power of flight.—Scotsman.