The Sizes and Shapes of Wings and their relation to Flight.
"… the fowls of heaven have wings,
And blasts of heaven will aid their flight:
* * * * *
Chains tie us down by land and sea."—Wordsworth.
The evasiveness of flight—The size of the wing in relation to that of the body—Noisy flight—“Muffled” flight—The swoop of the sparrow-hawk—The “flighting” of ducks—The autumn gatherings of starlings and swallows—“Soaring” flights of storks and vultures—The wonderful “sailing” feats of the albatross—The “soaring” of the skylark—The “plunging” flight of the gannet, tern, and kingfisher.
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Who needs to be told that birds fly? So common-place has this fact become that the many, and varied forms of wings, and the peculiarities of flight which are associated with these differences, are rarely perceived. Even sculptors, and artists show a hopeless unfamiliarity with the shapes of wings, and their meanings, at any rate, as a general rule. Look at their attempts to display birds in flight, or in the fanciful use of wings which convention has ascribed to angels. For the most part these superbly beautiful appendages are atrociously rendered.
Yet it must be confessed that any attempt to explain exactly how birds fly must fail. We can do no more than state the more obvious factors which are indispensable to flight, and the nature of its mechanism. The subtleties, and delicate adjustments of actual flight evade us.
Our appreciation, however, of this supreme mode of locomotion will be materially quickened, if we make a point of studying the varied forms of flight as opportunities present themselves.
To begin with, it is worth noting that the size of the wing decreases with the weight of the body to be lifted—up to a certain point, of course. This, perhaps, may seem strange a statement to make. But it can be readily verified. Compare, for example, the size of the body in relation to the wings, in the case of the butterfly and the dragon-fly, on the one hand, and the partridge and the crow, on the other. The two first named, by comparison, have enormous wings.