There are some amazing feats of locomotion within birds, the one that stands out for a lot is the shear speeds that they can achieve. The fastest animal by far is the beautiful Peregrine falcon, achieving speeds of up to 289 km/h in their speed dives used to catch its pray. However, in terms of horizontal speed, the golden eagle is faster, moving at speed of 129 km/h compared to the 110 km/h.
Seeing the Wandering Albatross is a wonderful sight, having the largest wingspan of up to 3.5 m allows it to become an incredibly efficient flyer. I have to say this bad-ass has to be my favourite bird. These 8 kg birds live most of their 70 year long lives in the air, that's right. They're able to fly for thousands of miles without ever flapping. Albatrosses live mainly in oceans of the southern hemisphere and it just a phenomenal organism. Oh, by the way, it travels around 25,000,000 km in its life (to the moon and back 18 times!)There are however, downsides to being a bird. Travelling through the air is much more energy demanding then both land and sea location. The pectorals are the muscles that are responsible for the powerful wing strokes actually makes up 15 to 20% of its total mass. Pectoral contractions don't instantaneously result in movement, meaning that its response time is a lot slower to say a lynx and so allows the them to catch birds before they have enough time to fly away (however for an albatross this is not an issue!).
Oh and this is a little Treat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y
Now there's something to stroke your goatee on!
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