A Gift of Wings

There’s something the matter with seagulls

I’ve always envied the seagull. He seems so free and uninhibited in his flying. In contrast with him I fuss and figure and clutter up the sky with noise just to stay in the air. He’s the artist. I’m the tyro.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to wonder about the gull. Although he zooms and dives and turns with a grace that leaves me green-eyed, that’s all he does—zoom and dive and turn. No aerobatics! Either he lacks initiative or he’s faint-hearted. Neither of these conditions is becoming to a top hand in the air. I don’t want to be hard on him—don’t expect eight-point rolls and clover-leafs initially but it doesn’t seem too much to ask for a simple loop or an easy slow roll.

Many times as a confirmed gull watcher, I’ve been sure some young ace was going to show me something. He’d come screaming down toward the water, building up speed enough to satisfy any pilot and pull up… up… up… till I would be sure he was going over the top. I’d stand there muttering “Pull it in!” but something always seemed to happen. You could see him slackening off the G’s and the pullup arc would widen. He would roll out and lose himself in the crowd of his fellows as if thoroughly ashamed that he had dogged it.

“You look so lordly,” I’d think, “but put a sparrow on your tail and I’ll bet you couldn’t shake him.”

Other birds have developed some precision flying and a few aerobatics. Geese sometimes fly a passable formation, and that’s worth mention. Some geese, though, evidently fear the mid-air collision. Many a formation has been spoiled by number four or five taking too much spacing and straggling all over the sky. Add to this the quacking of the others telling him to close it up, and it’s just plain sloppy flying. No wonder hunters shoot them down.

The unlikely pelican is almost a candidate in the aerobatic field. He can execute a neat split-S, but he doesn’t meet a prime requirement of the maneuver: pulling out. He doesn’t even seem to try to pull out, and ends in a geyser of white spray in the water. This isn’t even playing the game.

So we come back to the seagull. We can excuse pelicans and geese, robins and wrens, but a seagull was plainly designed for aerobatics. Consider these qualifications:

1. Strong wings and spars properly proportioned.

2. Slightly unstable design.

3. High limiting Mach.

4. Low stall speed.

5. Rugged construction.

6. Extreme maneuverability.

But all these factors are useless because he isn’t aggressive in his flying. He’s content to fly his life away practicing fundamentals that he learned during his first five hours in the air. So, although I do admire the seagull and the free way he flies, if I had to forego an aggressive spirit to trade places with him, I’d choose my noisy cockpit any day.