[Tweeters] Bird Behavior - "Keeping a level head"

[Jim Betz via Tweeters]

Hi,

   A while back I posted about how I'd noticed that some sandpipers at 
Channel Drive

were keeping their heads level in tight turns where the body and wings 
were essentially

in the vertical plane ("on their side").

   On our recent trip to Cape May I took a lot of pictures of various 
species in flight

and it seems like pretty much all birds do this "all the time" (head 
'parallel' to the

ground even if body and/or wings are not.  Here's an interesting pic of 
an Osprey

taken right after it began a dive ...


https://eamon.smugmug.com/Family-pics-from-jim/Birds-and-Stuff-from-Jim/n-4Cw3NF/Cape-May/i-hLnmXQS/A


... and what I notice is that the bird has rotated its entire body so 
the underside is 'up' and

the head is 'normal'.  If you think about how an Osprey dives into the 
water after a fish

this makes a lot of sense because it can keep focused on the fish and 
adjust its flight path

for the target (fish).


   I went back and looked at flight pics of eagles, hawks, owls, gulls 
and even passerines - and in

every case where the body/wings were off level - the head was still 
"level" (not necessarily

'precisely level' level but definitely 'essentially level').


   So, this seems like an additional feature of having a relative long 
neck and a head that can

easily rotate relative to the shoulders/body/wings.

- Jim