Camera strapped to a bird gives a real bird’s eye view of flight:
The open-space flights are interesting, but the true, terrifying insanity begins around the 1:50 mark, when the bird somehow navigates through an extremely dense forest at high speed without splattering against a tree trunk. WOW.
That goshawk really knows his stuff, amazing footage.
I had on standby a project to install a tiny wireless camera (this tiny) on one of my small R/C planes, so I can fly around the park with a true birds eye view, although I’m not going to be squeezing through branches like that any time soon… at least not with a flyable airplane after the event.
Wow! Impressive stuff. The Goshawk part was amazing.
When you think about the individual primary feathers changing position rapidly to stabilize flight, the wing movements, and the changes of direction, there’s a lot of control being exercised by that little bird brain. Now think for moment about processing all the spatial data – the balance sensing, the kinesthetic awareness of the constantly-changing body position, sensing wind directions, and all that visual data streaming in as the terrain flashes by – that’s a lot of mental activity right there too.
Now consider for a moment what the falcon/hawk is experiencing internally. All that data processing and flight control is happening at high speed subconsciously – the bird is actually concentrating on spotting tiny movements of prey animals. He’s just looking for breakfast; the whole miracle of flight he takes for granted.
I’ve got three pet birds at the moment, and I’ve had several others over the years. They are can maneuver at 30-40 mph through a cluttered apartment with moving people, sometimes even moving people chasing after them. They think it’s great fun.
I had a lovebird once who taught himself to do Immelmans. He’d fly into a closet then use the maneuver to change direction without slowing down.
Yep, birds are amazing.
I hear that in the uncut footage, Luke pops up up from behind one of those trees and cuts off the front of the bird’s beak with his lightsaber.