The Fly By
by Rick Shea
Title
The Fly By
Artist
Rick Shea
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
On a misty and overcast June 2006 morning, I set out for a walk with my camera along the boardwalk that is a prominent and well-used feature of Toronto's eastern Beach community. Many geese inhabit this part of the Lake Ontario shoreline, and on this morning the commuter traffic turned out to be rather heavy.
This is one of those shots that you can't anticipate but must recognize quickly when it presents itself. I had noticed how the lighting that morning rendered the lake and the sky in almost the same tones, with the delineation of the horizon aided by a thin band of mist. I was framing the lake, sky and clouds when I noticed out of the corner of my left eye the line of geese in the foreground, moving from left to right. As I lined them up, I spotted the distant line of geese moving in the opposite direction. I just happened to be ready for them.
A flock of sea ducks, pelicans, or sandpipers skimming low over the water's surface is a common seashore sight. Far from shore, shearwaters often closely follow the contours of the waves, and gaggles of auklets fly rapidly just above the water. Skimming permits the birds to take advantage of an aerodynamic phenomenon known as "ground effect." The patterns of airflow around a wing that is operating close to a surface are modified by that surface in a manner that reduces drag, the resistance of the air to the progress of the wing. Sometimes overloaded airplanes are sometimes incapable of climbing out of the ground effect even though they can maintain flight close to the ground.
Thus, everything else being equal, it is more efficient to fly close to a surface than far from it. But things are rarely equal, which is why birds most often tend to take advantage of the ground effect when the "ground" is water. The ground effect only occurs when the flying object is much less than a wingspan from the surface -- and at such an altitude over land a bird would be continually flying among obstacles, through grass, and so on. Only water is sufficiently uncluttered to permit such close safe passage.
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September 14th, 2014
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