BIKDS AND THE WIND 



By Neil T. McMiixan 

 Captain, Eastern Air Lines 



[With 3 plates] 



Wind is the major influence in the life of a bird. It is a strong 

 factor in his daily activities. His range and habits are controlled by 

 the use he can make of the wind. During migration it is wind that 

 sets the routes and schedules and is the primary cause of delays and 

 accidents. In reality, it is the air that goes places and the birds go 

 with it. Unless forced, a bird will not fly any great distance. When- 

 ever possible, he rides the wind. 



These are not statements of established fact made by an accom- 

 plished ornithologist but the personal beliefs of an aviator who 

 freely admits that he has a better knowledge of wind that he has 

 of the birds. Because his own work is controlled by wind, he is 

 certain to regard both it and the bird in a different way than a bird 

 student who spends the major part of his time at the bottom of the 

 great ocean of air. Neither view is likely to be wholly correct nor 

 is it likely to be entirely wrong. Because his beliefs may have some 

 value, the writer welcomes this opportunity to tell of them. 



To a bird on the wing, the wind is a vehicle or means of transpor- 

 tation — not a propelling agent. Through countless generations of 

 living on the surface of the globe where two elements — air and land 

 or air and water — are in collision, man came to associate wind with 

 a pushing force that could vary in intensity, from a breeze that ca- 

 ressed his cheek to a tornado that hurled him to destruction. Wlien 

 he learned to fly, he found that as soon as he was free of the earth 

 his old conception of the wind was wrong. What is true in aviation 

 is true in ornithology. A bird is carried. He is never pushed or 

 blown. 



Although A. Landsborough Thomson and a few others have rec- 

 ognized it, there is much in the literature on birds to indicate that 

 this essential truth has been missed. Such expressions as "flying in 

 the teeth of a gale," "buffeted by high winds," and "blown far in- 



* Reprinted by permission from Bird-Lore, vol. 40, No. 6, November-December 1938. 

 197855—40 24 355 



