“Q: Hey, I was looking up some birds and I found out that the albatross has an unexpectedly fast flight speed for its wingtype (high aspect ratio, soaring wings). Obviously I don’t think it flies that fast for a sustained period. What I wanted to know is, are albatrosses ALSO good at maneouvering? Like, can they take sharp turns mid-air? I would guess, due to wing-shape, that they aren’t very fast divers. Not like, say, eagles (yeah I picked another big wing bird).”

— Anonymous

Suspiciously Fast Albatrosses: Masters of Physics, or Dark Wizards?

Look, I am not a physicist, nor am I somebody who studies wizards so I can’t tell you for sure, but albatrosses manage to hit really fast cruising speeds, which is especially confusing because albatrosses like, don’t ever flap? ever???? But they were getting clocked at ridiculous speeds like this Grey-headed Albatross at 127km/hr (~79mph), who was just foraging for food.

Turns out albatrosses use a method called dynamic soaring, which basically means they use their [dark wizard powers] hypersensitivity to the air patterns around them to hack fluid dynamics around the ocean surface and get a speed boost. It baffled basically everyone for a really long time and here’s the exhaustive physicsy reason why. So, yes, actually - albatrosses are unreasonably fast, and can keep it up for sustained periods!

Maneuvering (or not)

Albatrosses are not very good at maneuvering. If you’ve ever seen one trying to land, you can see that they’re very bad at interacting with and accounting for solid objects.

That being said, trading height for speed is not something you necessarily need specialized wings for. Eagles’ wings are also designed for soaring - they just take advantage of uprising thermals whereas albatrosses rely more on horizontal air currents.

Diving is really just falling with a target, and albatrosses are fairly good at it - all albatross species hunt prey in the water, after all. Shy albatrosses in particular are very like gannets in diving capability - they have been found not only diving deep, but also pursuing prey underwater.

Not many feeding videos of albatrosses of youtube (unacceptable), but here’s a Wandering Albatross - the largest species - successfully catching lunch. PRETTY NEAT