A blog by my colleague Barbara Cockburn on a 1911 article Flight published regarding the study of birds in flight, reminded me of an ah-hah bird moment I had last week.
One of the advantages of being snowed-in for a week at my rural home in Maryland is that I get to watch the birds, lots of birds, coming to our back sliding door for the sunflower seeds we (mostly my wife) toss out. Usually we get a variety of birds, including cardinals, that look like this...
One bird in particular last week however caught my wife's eye - a female cardinal that I call the "Advanced cardinal".
That's right - She had no tail. Nada. Yet she could fly as well as, and probably faster, than other cardinals. My brother-in-law Andy tells me that birds sometimes get their tail feather stuck in the ice, which pulls out the features when the bird takes off. He says the feathers eventually grow back.
Given at how winged aircraft are evolving to be tail-less however, why bother? It's not a sin anymore.
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