Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Planning a flight path
Planning a flight path
If I am a predator, I would make use of the Sun behind me to plan my overall route. This gives me good visual definition, while blinding the prey. So in the morning set off westward, moving more northerly and ending up easterly. The exact direction is more important morning and evening for a low flying bird, while the opposite is true for a high flyer.
So one might expect a teardrop shape, off to the west with higher flight mid-day.
Whether any testing against this scheme can be done, is doubtful.
The teardrop assumes roosting at the same place. With a lazy migration northwards ( in Northern Hemisphere) one might get a series of daily semicircles. It is lousy going south, of course, and you might as well go straight south.
So much for speculation
MartinW
