Landing and hopping by small short legged birds: A short note and micro-video

Both the takeoff and the landing are critical phases in a bird's flight with the precise wing and body movements.

Among birds, landing is carefully control mechanism for minimizing their kinetic energy for a successful touch-down.

It is mainly the wings that are responsible for controlling most of acceleration during takeoff and landing with some contribution by the legs.

In landing of a bird, the aerodynamics of the body, tail and wings (down-stroke amplitude, wing-beat frequency, and down-stroke velocity) and kinematics of the feet and claws helps them in proper landing.

Once landed, birds use their legs and feet both as air brakes and to grasp the surface and overcome the inertia of motion.

It has been found that the birds are capable of repositioning their claws from one graspable bump to another in a few milliseconds.

Thus, birds use multiple mechanisms to adjust thrust and drag body angle, tail angle, and wing plane angles to near-vertical orientations to increase drag during landing and use their claws for applying brakes to come to stand still.

Most short-legged birds move forward in single hops successively One can see hopping action prominently in jungle babblers or seven sisters.