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A comment on Bird with GPS flies into typhoon, carried 700 miles, reaching 15000 ft altitude. Parent comment

Re:Bird with GPS flies into typhoon, carried 700 miles, reac... by tw04 on Thursday October 26, 2023 @06:48PM (#38032644)
If the bird’s natural speed is 7mph, and the tail wind is 7mph, the bird is still flying at 7mph airspeed, its ground speed just increases to 14mph.

No different than a jet flying with or against the jet stream.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/ai...

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Re:Bird with GPS flies into typhoon, carried 700 miles, reac... by natoliniak on Thursday October 26, 2023 @07:01PM (#38032747)
that is my point - in order to stay up, the bird would need to either flap its wings for 700 miles non-stop (unlikely) in order to maintain velocity difference between it and the ambient air OR glide which basically means he was not traveling at the speed of ambient air, otherwise there would be no lift pressure generated on his wings and he would drop to the ground
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Re:Bird with GPS flies into typhoon, carried 700 miles, reac... by hansvm on Thursday October 26, 2023 @07:09PM (#38032806)
Ignore the storm for a moment, and ask whether a bird can fly for 7h+, either from flapping, gliding, or navigating updrafts. The answer is yes, that's trivial for many many bird species, especially those with a propensity for ocean travel. The storm then just changes the baseline ground speed.
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Re:Bird with GPS flies into typhoon, carried 700 miles, reac... by my12parsecs on Friday October 27, 2023 @03:16AM (#38035625)
There's stuff like dynamic soaring that Albatrosses use to travel thousands of miles over the ocean using little energy.

Some enthusiasts use this to make RC gliders go really fast, and the record is over 500 mph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring

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