How do birds fly long distances without flapping their wings?

Answer 1

Once birds get up in the air, they use two main flying techniques to stay up there.

Soaring: When birds soar, they take advantage air currents to help hold them up. Three kinds of air currents are especially helpful to soaring birds.

Thermal air currents develop in places where the air is warmer in one spot than an adjoining area, such as a paved road alongside a snowy field. Even on a very cold day, the sun will heat the pavement at least a few degrees more than the snow. This slightly warmer air is slightly lighter than the colder air, and rises. This rising air current can lift very light objects, like feathers and hollow bones. The birds that most often take advantage of thermals (like the hawks that fly along coastlines) usually have very wide wings and tail. This makes the area of their wings very large compared to their body weight.
Updrafts, also called obstruction currents, develop when wind hits an obstruction, like a cliff or a building. The rushing air has to go somewhere, so it goes up, and can carry a bird up with it. Birds who fly on updrafts (like the many hawks that migrate along Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania) also have very wide wings and tail.
Wind moving toward a bird with spread wings can hold the bird up, thanks to the airfoil shape of the wings. Birds that fly on moving air currents often have long, narrow wings, such as gulls and albatrosses.


Flapping: When birds flap, the stroke of their downbeat moves the wing tips forward and downward. The wingtips make a loop at the bottom of the downstroke, and as the wings move up, the wing tips move upward and backward. In the downstroke, the pressure is higher below the wing than above, causing lift. And as they move forward, the rush of air on their airfoil wings causes more lift. But because flapping birds have smaller wings than soaring birds, they must move forward faster to stay in the air. Most songbirds must fly at least 11 miles per hour to stay up. One scientist calculated that for an ostrich to stay aloft, it would have to take off and maintain a minimum speed of 100 miles per hour. Birds who use their wings to flap more than soar often have smaller wings than soaring birds.

Answer 2

The technique most familiar to people is soaring, where some birds such as raptors use updrafts of warm air to stay in the air, most birds that do this have fairly long/broad wings to take full advantage of this, a bird using a thermal to stay up can remain in the air for as long as the thermal is there. Some birds will move from one thermal to the next during their migration. Then there are seabirds, there are no thermals over water so soaring is not an option, however there is usually a good wind, the birds in this case have long narrow wings (think of an albatros),the birds cut into the wind which creates lift, they then basically make a circle and cut into again, etc so they don't have to flap as long as there is wind.

Answer 3

They glide and use thermals (areas of warm air rising) to stay in the air for hours.

Answer 4

Yea, the wonders of Allah. The nestlings fall out of the tree and die before they are mature enough. Or, when the nestlings are still too immature to fly, they become vulnerable to predation. This is not the wonders of Allah. This is evolution and survival of the fittest at work. Nature is cruel.

Answer 5

How does a kite stay in the air so long???......by the wind underneath the wings!!!

Answer 6

They use the wind and they glind the wind like the sport - wind gliding

Answer 7

they glide or ride air currents

Answer 8

they soar and glide to maintain flight.

Answer 9

they soar on top of an air current

Answer 10

They soar, like a hang glider, or glider.