Birds of a feather . . .
Driving home each day I pass a power plant close to my house that usually has a large steam plume rising several hundred feet into the sky this time of year. If there is no wind it goes vertically straight up over a thousand feet into the air and on days with a light breeze it angles up into the air until the steam plume evaporates. The hot air continues to rise even without a visible plume to show you where it is going.
The strange and sometimes funny thing that many of us driving by each day notice is the large flock of birds that are flying in circles upon the rising warm air. When I used to fly hang gliders when I was young it is called thermaling and within the hot air rising you make tight turns so you can stay in and ride to the top sometimes just under the bottom of the clouds.
It was a great feeling going up to the top of a thermal and then leaving that one to fly over to another rising air mass to start circling all over again. Some flights I may have made over a thousand 360 degree turns while flying. My longest distance flight in a non powered hang glider was over one hundred and forty miles from where I had taken off. Others had flown greater distances than I during tournaments but each long distance flight came with a great sense of accomplishment. It was way cool taking off and enjoying the adventure of flying to places unknown much like hot air balloons floating on the wind currents.
Getting back to my story today and leaving the reminiscing for another time as I drive by there are so many birds flying tight circles within hot air. With it so cold outside I am sure it is a nice way to spend the whole day going in circles in the warm air. A little piece of summer in a white snowy environment with anywhere from a couple hundred birds to over a thousand happily playing in the rising air currents. There is a mixture of different birds from our always present ravens to bald eagles.
The ravens are what I call “two or three hoppers” as they get so fat from scrounging the trash cans and road kill that when they try to take off and fly away it usually takes them two to four hops to get into the air. I’ve seen a couple birds so fat they could not ‘fly’ more than about 200 feet before they land again to find something else to eat. They hang out close by any fast food joint or uncovered dumpsters giving access to easy food.
The eagles are usually more than three times the size of the large ravens but still can easily out fly them. The eagles will rise high in the air then tumble down chasing the ravens or diving fast toward the ground only to flare out at the bottom of the steam plume to start climbing back up to the apex of the heated column of air. There are also much smaller birds mixed in with the larger birds enjoying the warm break from the cold away from the power plant.
Watching all of them move in a semi-organized fashion is intriguing waiting for the traffic on the exit ramp to move onto Muldoon Road
Warmth on a cold winter afternoon with little effort as they use the natural currents of rising air to play and frolic during some of the coldest times of the year which is not a bad way to spend it if you cannot be sitting on the beach in Hawaii or Grand Cayman.
They say home is where the heart is but for these birds it is a column of rising warm air in an otherwise hostile environment.
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