Bird Flight: the Ins and Outs

Try to take ten seconds and think of something that flies. You probably thought of a plane, a drone, or most likely, a bird. Birds have been around for over 150 million years. They have perfected the thing that makes them so unique: flight. While our modern ways of aviation involve rapid propellers spinning faster than we can process, avians are able to use nothing but their own wings to travel vast distances. This article will explore why that is possible and how it works.

To actually be able to fly, birds have evolved to have exceptionally light bones, which are filled with bubbles of air. However, this makes said bones much more fragile. So to counteract this, bird bones are much denser than human bones.

Feathers are made up of thin barbed sticks that sit in tight rows. The barbs on those sticks weave together to form a strong barrier, similar to velcro. On a bird's wings, there are usually two types of feathers: primary feathers and secondary feathers. Primary feathers sit on the further reaches of a wing, and generate most of the force from wing motion. On the other hand, secondary feathers are located on the half of the wing closer to the birds, and they are layered to be an airfoil, which means they manipulate the air to generate motion.

When you watch a bird in flight, it probably looks like a repeated vertical flapping. In reality the wings are moving in a slightly tilted loop, with the feathers tightening and holding a wall while pushing down, then loosening and opening when going up. Along with this, the wings are pulled closer to the body of the bird to reduce resistance.

Could humans fly if they had wings? Absolutely not. According to Yale Scientific, an average adult male would need a wingspan of twenty-two feet, meaning you wouldn’t even be able to lift them!

Flight is such a wild concept, and the fact that birds have learned to achieve it biologically is astounding. I hope that the next time you see a pigeon in the street, or a crow yelling in the trees, you can acknowledge the wondrous abilities they possess.