It is fun to read Friamers’ hypotheses on formation flight in birds. They are entirely unprejudiced by any knowledge of the topic. Although knowledge of a subject is counter-friamistic and takes hard work, I modestly suggest that it is helpful to understand some of the aerodynamic principles behind formation flight before hyperventilating too much. The fact is that the Biot-Savart Law teaches that the asymptotic state is really quite close, as characteristic of a semi-infinite dipole field. Consequently, aerodynamics shows that for favorable interaction flyers can utilize uneven Vees, branched Vees, small Vees, big Vees, broken Vees – and migrating birds use them all. Or look as though they do! The tip station is theoretically the most unfavorable, but better than being solo. I have published seven papers on avian flight, and read and reviewed a good few more, so don’t know very much, but I would not presume any hypothesis on really why they do it, and who does what to whom. That’s for the birds!
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