Go!” Everyone knows birds can fly. et’s But not everyone knows that “L certain birds are really, really good at it. Meet a few of these champions of the skies. Flying Acby Ellen eLambeth; art sby Dave Clegg! Highest You don’t have to be a lightweight to fly high. Just look at a Ruppell’s griffon vulture (left). One was recorded flying at an altitude of 36,000 feet. That’s as high as passenger planes fly! In fact, it’s so high that you would pass out from lack of oxygen if you weren’t inside a Fastest (on the level) plane. How does the vulture manage? It has Swifts are birds that have that name for good special blood cells that make a small amount reason: They’re speedy! The swiftest bird using its own of oxygen go a long way. flapping-wing power is the common swift of Europe, Asia, and Africa (below). It’s been clocked at nearly 70 miles per hour. That’s the speed limit for cars on some highways. Vroom-vroom!
Fastest (in a dive) Fastest Migration With gravity helping out, a bird can pick up extra speed. Imagine taking a trip of about 4,200 And no bird can go faster than a peregrine falcon in a dive miles. Sure, you could easily do it in an airplane. after prey (right). In fact, no other animal on Earth can go as But a great snipe (right) did it on the wing in just fast as a peregrine: more than 200 miles per hour! three and a half days! That means it averaged about 60 miles The prey, by the way, is usually another bird, per hour during its migration between northern which the peregrine strikes in mid-air with its balled-up Europe and central Africa. That would sort of be feet. Then, as the prey drops toward the ground, like your family taking a car trip from Alaska to the falcon circles back and plucks it Florida without taking time to stop for out of the air. Wow! food, sleep, or gas. 14 15 Most Acrobatic No bird can beat a hummingbird (of any species) in a Battle of Flying Stars. Hummers Quietest have more moves than any other kind of bird (right). They can fly Wings create sound as they move forward, backward, and straight up in the air the way a helicopter against air. That’s why you hear the hum of a can. Also like a helicopter, they can hover in one place for a long darting hummingbird, the whistle of a landing dove, time. (That’s what they do when feeding on flower nectar.) or the whoosh of geese flying low overhead. But one kind of bird They can also dive through the air and do aerial makes hardly any sound at all in flight: an owl. Owls owe their quiet somersaults. Woo-hoo! To do all this, hummingbirds flight to soft wing feathers with fringed edges (left). These special beat their wings really fast (up to 200 flaps feathers muffle sound as they move across each other and a second) and with tricky twists against the air with every beat of the wings. That comes and turns. in handy for a creature that sneaks up on prey— especially in the dark of a silent night. Longest Time in the Air Swifts spend most of their lives in the air. But not touching down for 200 days straight? Turns out, the alpine swift can do just that! (left) Scientists put sensors on a few of these swifts and checked the incoming data for more than six months. It didn’t matter what time or how often the scientists checked. The birds were always either flapping or gliding in the skies over West Africa! Eating wasn’t a problem, as their food is mostly insects caught in flight. But how they were able to rest is still a bit of a mystery. Longest Nonstop Flight The bar-tailed godwit (above) doesn’t migrate as far as an arctic tern. And it doesn’t migrate as fast as a great snipe. But it does migrate farther Farthest Migration without stopping than any other bird. One godwit was The arctic tern is the champion tracked flying between Alaska and New Zealand long-distance flier right( ). Every year, it migrates with no rest stops along the way. In eight days, it Rangers: from pole to pole and then back again. The covered more than 7,000 miles across bird doesn’t take a direct path, but zigs and zags the Pacific Ocean. You might find different over the ocean. The total trip back and forth may opinions about some of cover more than 43,000 miles! An arctic tern will these top honors. But that stop on the water along its route, though, to just goes to show that even refuel on fish and other more birds may qualify as true flying champs. ocean creatures. —R.R. 16 17