Do birds ever stall?

LongRoadBob said:
Actually I’ve recently been wondering, because of POA, if some birds are better pilots than others. Like if some birds aren’t quite as elegant, maybe even clumsy. Do the other birds all talk about the one, “no situational awareness”?

Also, with watching them successfully land on a telephone pole, magpies where I am, I’m wondering if anyone is trying to emulate birds method for flying, where they can drop on a dime.
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Ignore the total ******** graphic at 2:07
 
I used to watch the Hawks in their mating rituals while flying sailplanes. Seems, and it is true, the birds view our quiet sailplanes as a non-threat and will actually fly formation with us if we fly slow. I have seen hawks approach my wing and seemingly try to extend their claws to grab the wing. But otherwise we would circle and watch as a lone female bird (we never actually checked the sex of each) would climb a high as she could flap and hover in one general spot. The males, usually 2 to 3, sometimes 4 would circle this female and when coming into her view they would each tuck their wings and dive as fast and hard as they could then pull up and present himself to her then take his spot circling while the others did the same demonstration for this female. After all of them preformed their best possible dive, pull up and recovery she would select the one she wanted and together they would fly away while the rest flew off alone. Made me sad for the losers as I am one of them. However, we never could tell if the female picked the one who performed the best dive or if he was picked for other reasons. We did notice what we thought was each hawk would actually look like they were encountering high speed stalls as they were trying to recover from their performance dives. I googled mating of hawks and they said nothing about this behavior. But every spring at the glider port all of us would seek out the mating hawks and every year we would see them. I do believe birds stall. They are fliers with wings, how could they not stall sometime? But I also know being able to fly helps when trying to pick up the "chicks".
 
Tantalum said:
is the bird flying inside a truck that's near weight capacity for the bridge it's on?
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If the weight of a square inch of air at sea level is 14.7 pounds. It's the weight of all the air stacked up from the ground to when there is no more air. ( I guess?) All that air stacked over the bridge and then the weight of the bird must be added too, right? Did they sleep at a Holiday Express the night before?
 
This morning I watched (what I think was a juvenile) vulture trying to gain altitude on the lee of a 250' ridge and it just wasn't happening. He'd get blown downwind, struggle to come back to the ridge but never gained a foot. I said, it looks like he is at best L/D, the entire time - from his pitch attitude or maybe the apparent aoa - and sure enough, he would suddenly drop a wing from time to time (it was not gusty at that hour & no thermals). He was a lot faster at recovering of course. I said (to my hiking partner but intended to the bird), just go further downwind, you will get some orographic or whatever they call it now off those buildings....and soon he actually did get blown to the buildings - and up he went! He got enough to come back to the hill/ridge and get onto the side of it where things were not ideal but at least not directly in the lee, and joined his buddies (called a "kettle").
So I'm not sure where this thread is but I think they stall occasionally.
 
David F.Soom said:
If the weight of a square inch of air at sea level is 14.7 pounds. It's the weight of all the air stacked up from the ground to when there is no more air. ( I guess?) All that air stacked over the bridge and then the weight of the bird must be added too, right? Did they sleep at a Holiday Express the night before?
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The force from the air is applied to both the top and bottom of the bridge and pretty much cancels out. But the weight of the bird gets added to the weight of the truck as previously noted. I don't know where they slept.
 
asicer said:
Isn't it a stall that happens between flare and touchdown?
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Nope, birds typically spoil lift when they land. It's not an aerodynamic stall. In fact birds do stall but they have much better recovery behavior than we do.
 
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