So how high does a Martin fly?

[Whippy]

So I'm on the windy.com website looking at the wind directions as I have done in the past. What is cool about windy.com is you can see wind directions at different heights or elevations. So if you see the wind blowing from the south on the surface you can adjust the bar to show the wind blowing from another direction at 5000 meters for example.

So today the wind in Texas on the surface is blowing from the South. When you get down into Mexico the wind is blowing from the East across the Gulf into Mexico City. Barely North of Mexico City the wind direction turns Southerly and continues to blow into Texas.

At 4200m altitude, the wind is Southerly all along Central America out of South America and it meets up with the Easterly wind into Mexico City.

Anyway. I could go on and on about current wind directions but, if I were a really smart bird, which I am, I would be able to select my altitude and wind direction to achieve the most effortless method of travel. I would take off and reach 4200 m out of Brazil, ride that into Mexico City and then decrease altitude to about 2000m to meet up with the strong Southerly flow and ride that on home to Plano.

I wouldn't have to worry too much about feeding since a lot of insects are pushed upwards on thermals and have been known to reach as high as 10,000 feet.

So I'm curious if you guys/gals think Martins are smarter flyers than I think I am. I tend to think they are smarter than me when it comes to flying.

Coolwhips

[DLN]

Hi Whippy, I like your thinking but, as a retired USAF meteorologist who has given countless flight weather briefs, I'm pretty sure the Purple Martins are not getting a flight weather briefing before they take off.

DLN

[Whippy]

Hi Whippy, I like your thinking but, as a retired USAF meteorologist who has given countless flight weather briefs, I'm pretty sure the Purple Martins are not getting a flight weather briefing before they take off.

DLN

Probably right. They may not have clearance to receive such information.

But I was thinking along the lines of how buzzards and other of the kind can feel the thermals under them when soaring. Also thinking of how animals and fishes can detect change in barometric pressures. So I figured birds that migrate such a long distance have a sense of prevailing winds and such. I know their GPS is spot on so I give them that. Birds that fly trans ocean have got to have something up their sleeve to make that trip with somewhat ease.

Coolwhips

[TheSmiths]

I believe the PMCA has a study coming out in the near future (diurnal migration vs nocturnal migration) that may include updated info about that.

The link below goes to a 2012 study which includes "swallows"...

"How do diurnal long-distance migrants select flight altitude in relation to wind?"
María Mateos-Rodríguez, Felix Liechti
Behavioral Ecology, Volume 23, Issue 2, March-April 2012, Pages 403–409,
https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article ... 9#85865774

[PMDavid]

Cool whippy,I’ve often thought man what a hard flight that must be . I think ur on to something here and it will be very interesting to see the answers ,facts and theories that arise here. I’ll be following this close

[Whippy]

I believe the PMCA has a study coming out in the near future (diurnal migration vs nocturnal migration) that may include updated info about that.

The link below goes to a 2012 study which includes "swallows"...

"How do diurnal long-distance migrants select flight altitude in relation to wind?"
María Mateos-Rodríguez, Felix Liechti
Behavioral Ecology, Volume 23, Issue 2, March-April 2012, Pages 403–409,
https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article ... 9#85865774

Thank you, The Smiths.

From that study is this:

Our results show that birds failed to select the flight altitude with maximum tailwind assistance within a given range of altitudes (0–1000 and 0–2500 m), suggesting they do not explore the entire air column of potential flight altitudes to check for the best tailwind assistance. Instead, there is good evidence that migrating birds do evaluate tailwind assistance while climbing up through the air column but following the simple rule of thumb “climb up as long as tailwind assistance is increasing.”

Of course that does not apply to Martins but is interesting none the less.

Coolwhips

[DLN]

That was an interesting article to read. Thanks to the Smiths for posting it! Whippy's observation that the Purple Martin "GPS is spot on" likely is the key to the answer to his question. I don't know much about the Purple Martins but I know something about the atmosphere. It's always in a state of constant flux...it's a fluid and always moving. Any object desiring to move through the atmosphere, at a preferred or assigned altitude, to a fixed target would at some point have to choose a less optimal tailwind, or an even harder to deal with cross wind, or an even harder to deal with head wind to get to that fixed target. Otherwise, if they only optimized their flight path for a tailwind, they will likely end up off target more times than on target.

DLN