NASA and the BTO

About 18 months ago, the Eagle-eyed amongst my limited readership will have seen some questions about using a picture for a piece of research into bird flight.

Well it turns out that enquiry was from Albion Bowers, Chief Scientist at the Neil A Armstrong Flight Research Centre at NASA.   Last month, March 2016, the paper was published.   It's called 'On Wings of the Minimum Induced Drag: Spanload Implications for Aircraft and Birds'.

They used the following picture of Brown Pelicans (see posts from February 2010) flying in formation as proof of part of their work, illustrating specifically that the previously considered location of the lift vortexes couldn't be there or these birds couldn't fly like this:

Suffice to say I am extremely chuffed to have been asked and delighted to have been published in this way.

Quickly thereafter we got our regular copy of Bird Table from the BTO, a magazine for their regular garden bird sighting reporters (amongst other bird research work), in which they had published a picture of a Black Redstart, which visited our garden this winter (see posts from November 2015).   

They are quite a scarce bird so to have one stay around for three days was a treat.   Also very happy to have been published twice now, seems like a good pat on the back to me :)