Avianautics

My fas­ci­na­tion with the grace and beauty of avian flight that I was observ­ing and doc­u­ment­ing in pho­tographs even­tu­ally col­lided with what I had learned many years ago as a pilot, aero­nau­tics instruc­tor and one-time air­craft designer. What I saw as I watched birds fly sim­ply did not agree with the mea­ger expla­na­tions of bird flight as pre­sented in most ornitho­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. The more I stud­ied bird flight the more I found that it did not fol­low aero­nau­tics, as I knew it, either.
Clearly, this was new ter­ri­tory and I soon leaned that I could not nav­i­gate it with pre­con­ceived notions.

My first pro­fes­sor, a stately old Great Blue Heron, set me on the path of re-thinking how birds fly. As a fine art pho­tog­ra­pher, my spe­cialty is birds in flight and Prof. Heron returned repeat­edly to his favorite fish­ing spot allow­ing me, if I crept up slowly, to pho­to­graph him when he stopped fish­ing for the day and flew off.

Focused as I was on cap­tur­ing the ‘per­fect pho­to­graphic moment,’ I was an inat­ten­tive stu­dent; for­tu­nately, he was a patient teacher. Day after day, he would cease fish­ing, glance at me, raise his great wings, let out a brief squawk, tilt for­ward and fly.

Finally, one day as he flew off, I grasped just what he was try­ing to teach me. With a side­ways glance to see if I was look­ing, Pro­fes­sor Heron squawked, “Watch me.”

With a sin­gle down­ward beat of his great wings, he hurled him­self two body lengths (body + extended legs) for­ward. This was astound­ing – his wings moved down but his body moved for­ward!  How could I have missed see­ing this?

The Pro­fes­sor, demon­strat­ing how his wings pro­pel him forward

How did he con­vert ver­ti­cal move­ment of his wings into hor­i­zon­tal move­ment of his body? With that I began my pho­to­graphic explo­ration into bird flight.