Flight
Level flight is relatively slow. Maximum sustained speed is 14 m/s (about 30 miles per hour). Non-flapping phases are often interspersed throughout the flight. Changes in direction can be extremely quick, probably helped by the bird's long tail.
Read more about this topic: Black-billed Magpie
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“One man’s observation is another man’s closed book or flight of fancy.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things ...”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)