Albatrosses are the greatest birds in the world. It’s 1:30 am where I am, and I will never miss a chance to extol the awe of the albatross.
Did you know that albatrosses have a higher heart rate while resting on the beach than while flying? That’s because they take advantage of an aerobatic technique called “dynamic soaring” which extracts energy from the ambient wind conditions and converts it to kinetic energy! (This is opposed to static soaring, which you typically see in vultures exploiting a solar thermal. The big difference between dynamic vs. static soaring is the direction of lift. Static is up so it’s easy. Dynamic is to the side so it’s harder.) It’s a sort of perpetual motion machine that albatrosses have developed evolutionarily. This is what enables them to fly enormous distances across the Pacific Ocean; they are able to not only conserve energy while flying, but they produce it as well! Amazing!
Final point, misinterpretations of “the rhyme of the ancient mariner” have given albatrosses a terrible name. In the story, it’s not the albatross that gives the mariner bad luck; it’s the fact he killed it. The albatross was a harbinger of good luck. In fact, the albatross arrived when the wind did not because it brought the wind, but because it followed it (the wind gradient over the sea is what enables dynamic soaring). “An albatross around your neck” is not a judgement of the albatross, but the killing of it. But somehow the albatross gets the bad name? Come on!
Maybe the bird is more nervous on the beach than flying around on the open water.
But it’s not even that flying takes little effort, it’s that it takes no effort. The bird does not use any of its own potential energy for flight, it extracts it from the wind gradient over the ocean in the course of flying, and turns it into kinetic energy. It would tire too quickly otherwise, and would be unable to make the transpacific journey to breeding grounds.
Did you know that albatrosses have a higher heart rate while resting on the beach than while flying? That’s because they take advantage of an aerobatic technique called “dynamic soaring” which extracts energy from the ambient wind conditions and converts it to kinetic energy! (This is opposed to static soaring, which you typically see in vultures exploiting a solar thermal. The big difference between dynamic vs. static soaring is the direction of lift. Static is up so it’s easy. Dynamic is to the side so it’s harder.) It’s a sort of perpetual motion machine that albatrosses have developed evolutionarily. This is what enables them to fly enormous distances across the Pacific Ocean; they are able to not only conserve energy while flying, but they produce it as well! Amazing!
Final point, misinterpretations of “the rhyme of the ancient mariner” have given albatrosses a terrible name. In the story, it’s not the albatross that gives the mariner bad luck; it’s the fact he killed it. The albatross was a harbinger of good luck. In fact, the albatross arrived when the wind did not because it brought the wind, but because it followed it (the wind gradient over the sea is what enables dynamic soaring). “An albatross around your neck” is not a judgement of the albatross, but the killing of it. But somehow the albatross gets the bad name? Come on!