Birds

One last vacation update: we are all home now except for Micah, who has now been cleared by a doctor in Berlin to fly home tomorrow. So we will have one whole day with the entire family together, before Jane helps Noah drive his stuff out to New York City to begin his grad studies at Columbia.

Moving away from the vacation, on a recent plane flight I got to wondering how high birds can fly. In investigating, I came across this fascinating article on the Audubon site. Bar-headed geese fly directly over Mt. Everest! I had no idea birds could fly that high. A scientist points out that these geese can fly at over 50 mph under their own power; "add the thrust of tailwinds of perhaps 100 miles an hour if they are lucky, and these birds really move." And in the following article, it says that the highest flying bird recorded was a kind of vulture called a Ruppell's griffon which was unfortunate enough to be sucked into the engine of a jet flying at 37,900 feet. If you're interested in the wonders of nature, I recommend this article.