Bird Taking Off at 20,000 fps (213 milliseconds) - Smarter Every Day 197

Hey, it's me, Destin. Sorry for the vertical video there. I was recording for the Instagram story. So I caught this bird with my hand, and I got to thinking about it. It's kind of a shame to have a bird and let it go and not film it in slow motion. So, that's what we're gonna do.

Alright, this is my daughter's butterfly thing. Where you at, little bird? Hey, calm down, buddy. Calm down, calm down. There you go, calm down. Okay, let's hold you where you don't get hurt. There you go. Alright. Let's go let you go. What do you think?

So I've always been fascinated by birds, their wings in particular. You see that the primary feathers—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I thought they had ten primary feathers. Maybe they do. And then these are the secondary feathers, and then the feathers around his eyes. It's really cool. He's scared, so we're gonna try to get him out of here real quick. He's wanting to fly away.

I know this isn't like a super in-depth SmarterEveryDay video, but this is just a target of opportunity—something to learn really quick. What I want to know is, when he takes off, if his tail feathers are correcting immediately or if he has to wait until he's moving in flight before he starts using those. We probably won't see that because we literally have one shot to do this, but I'm really excited.

Did you see his eyes? Like, the little feathery things around his eyes. I've never noticed that. Anyway, he's getting tired. We got to let him go. Alright, here we go. Releasing the bird. Three, two, one. That was fast. Alright, let's look at it. I mean, we’ve probably just got the launch, but I like birds.

Alright, I set out to make a cute little video of a bird hopping out of my hand, but I actually learned a ton from this footage. Number one: it's clear that the bird hops out of my hand, and I've never thought about that. I'm sure that's just common knowledge to ornithologists, but for some reason, I always thought birds just start flapping to fly. And he's hopping! Why would they not use their legs to get further away from the ground? So their wings don't hit the ground or my hand or whatever. That's just cool. I've never thought about that.

Number two: I think it's neat that he points his tail towards the ground on that hop. And I've got to believe he's doing that to reduce the vertical component of drag so that he can hop farther. Another thing that happens is, on the downstroke, you can see that his feathers are together, but his feathers delaminate to reduce drag on the backstroke. We've seen that in a SmarterEveryDay episode in the past. It's fun to see it again here.

Number four: it's cool to see him transition that tail from being pointed down. He raises it. So he's getting ready for horizontal flight. So that transition from vertical flight to horizontal flight—he straightens his tail out to get it in the game. He's getting ready to make corrections in horizontal flight. I think it's really cool to make your own observations because all this probably exists in a scientific paper somewhere, but it's fun to actually see it for yourself and try to understand.

I'm gonna be looking for these things every time I see a bird take off from now on. Alright, that's enough of this bird. You want to see my garden? These are my sunflowers. I grow them for all the ladies in my life: my daughter, my mom, my wife. While we're here, you want to see my corn-es? My corn-es are bad. I think I overwatered them. These are my corn-es. These are my corn-es.

And right here, look at this bad boy. Look at it. Beautiful. It's a good-looking melon right there. Anyway, it's a simple video. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm Destin. You're getting smarter every day. Have a good one. Bye.