ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
Flying through gaps: how does a bird deal with the problem and what costs are there?
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Flight activity and effort of breeding pied flycatchers in the wild, revealed with accelerometers and machine learning.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Prospective control of steering through multiple waypoints.Journal of vision · 2024Article
- Birds both avoid and control collisions by harnessing visually guided force vectoring.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animals flying in the wild often show remarkable abilities to negotiate obstacles and narrow openings in complex environments. Impressive as these abilities are, this must result in costs in terms of impaired flight performance. In this study, I used a budgerigar as a model for studying these costs. The bird was filmed in stereo when flying through a wide range of gap widths from well above wingspan down to a mere 1/4 of wingspan. Three-dimensional flight trajectories were acquired and speed, wingbeat frequency and accelerations/decelerations were calculated. The bird used two different wing postures to get through the gaps and could use very small safety margins (down to 6 mm on either side) but preferred to use larger when gap width allowed. When gaps were smaller than wingspan, flight speed was reduced with reducing gap width down to half for the smallest and wingbeat frequency was increased. I conclude that flying through gaps potentially comes with multiple types of cost to a bird of which the main may be: (i) reduced flight speed increases the flight duration and hence the energy consumption to get from point
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Registered trials
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