As me and The Significant Otter were trundling along in the Junkmobile, out of the blue she asked me " why would birds choose not to fly ? This gave me the opportunity for a bit of "mansplaining." Well, why even start flying in the first place ? .... it's a fair question, because flight has its costs/disadvantages. For a start, flying birds need to keep their weight down ... their bones are mostly hollow and thin, so they're easily broken. They have to have dinky heads and therefore tinky-winky brains so they can't do much thinking. And they can't binge-eat in times of plenty else they wouldn't be able to take off. Also, there is a "bigness" limit too .... Swans are getting close to it .... what a bother they have getting airborne ! So why bother ? Well, one of the big things is , they can avoid ground-based predators. First off, they can simply fly away. Boy, that must be annoying for those rats ! Not only that, they can nest up trees ( yes, I know some mammals do that too),right right up in the spindly wiggly twigs that most mammals can't manage to reach, so their young are safer.And so are they. And now us humans have arrived, they can nest on their houses. And they can look around into other gardens and see what's on offer.And fly over lakes and ponds and the sea (!) and catch fish and frogs etc. And they can do it very quickly and efficiently And also, being able to fly gives them a much bigger area for foraging for food.Wow! BUT ... if there are no ground predators and plenty of food to be "found on the ground" why bother with flight at all ? Why indeed ! The Dodo got caught out when humans arrived and shot them and the rats they brought with them ate them. Ouch. There's one more thing too ..it's often puzzled me ... I'll tell you about it after the music .... which, as usual, has nowt to do with all that ... Crumbs ... it's a words video too ... ... you can croon- along -a-Bob ! Well, here's the "mystery thing" wot I've wondered about ... over the course of many many years, I've watched zillions, nay, squillions of birds flying along, sometimes in flocks of tens of thousands, and I've never seen one fall out of the sky.
Don't birds get muscle cramps like us humans do ? That would be enough to plummet them to their death. Don't they ever die in flight ? I don't know. And then there's Swifts spending huge chunks of their lives flying .... and Shearwaters/Petrels etc ..but at least if owt went wrong over the sea they would be able to have a rest. Just a thought.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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