Did a bit of net trolling to see what papers might come to light.
The
following story sounds to be reasonably persuasive to me and, probably, is a useful read in conjunction with Megan's link. Don't fuss too much with the mathematics .. that's just there to confuse those who haven't been mathematically anointed with this and that.
To my simple, dumb, engineer's mind, but with a pilot's overlay .. it is a matter of playing cyclically and skilfully with overshoot and undershoot shear within the surface boundary layer. A bit of skill (which the albatross has from however long its genetic lineage might be) and one can run downwind, tack across and into wind according to one's penchant at the time.
Megan, being a flingwing player of very considerable maritime experience would be expected to have a pretty intimate appreciation of what the bird folks might be doing out there over the water ... I note that his link is to an old paper .. which I will contemplate over coffee this evening for interest.
the other was popping out of a cloud at 500 feet to be confronted by a bird.
The occasional benefits of VFR become more evident .. last time I had such an experience was in a glider tug (45 or so years ago) on descent (sort of maintaining VMC, I guess) .. don't you just love gliders skimming along at the cloud base ? How we didn't kill our collective selves as young idiots often causes me no end of wonderment ..