Stallie - what's wrong? Are backpackers out of season?
In a lighter vein, those of you who have replied to this thread might also enjoy
CATIII (and duck too)
Ever thought how CATIII got its name?
http://www.pprune.org/cgibin/ultimat...c&f=4&t=004616
Nothing on bird navigation in my Audubon Handbook
How To Identify Birds, but there were 14 pages on flight behaviour, including . . .
Soaring
To save energy during long migrations, or while circling high in the air and searching for food, many birds soar on outstretched, motionless wings. When air currents are deflected upward by long mountain ridges, some of these birds can travel for miles without a single wingbeat.
Dihedral Soaring
While most soaring birds hold their outstretched wings flat, a few raptors soar with the wings held in a shallow angle or V called a dihedral - a term borrowed from aviation. As these birds soar on dihedral wings, the usually appear unsteady, swaying from side to side.
[Made me think - now, just what came first, the dihedral winged bird or the dihedral winged aeroplane? 
]
Beeline Flight
Some birds have a regular, rhythmic, almost mechanical wingbeat and a perfectly straight flight path, as if the bird were being pulled rapidly along a taut wire. This "beeline" flight is characteristic of some large birds with relatively slow wingbeats, as well as some of the tiny hummingbirds.
Flying with Rapid Wingbeats
Smaller birds tend to have more rapid wingbeats than larger ones, but some birds have fast wingbeats because their wings are very small or short in relation to the size of the body. Although swifts have long wings, the bend of the wing is very close to the body, and they also beat their wings rapidly.
Stiff-winged Flight
When some seabirds flap their wings in normal flight, the angle of the wing does not bend, creating a striking, stiff-winged effect. The birds use their stiffly helf wings to coast on small air currents over the waves.
[Illustrated with photographs of albatrosses, albatrossi, whatever 
]
Follow-the-leader Flapping
Some water birds that fly in lines may coast for several seconds without flapping their wings. When the lead bird flaps its wings, each bird in the line then flaps its wings in turn, as if copying the bird just in front of it. A wave of flapping moves down the line.
Simulaneous Banking
In some species, the birds in a fast moving flock bank in a highly coordinated way. All the birds change position at almost exactly the same instant. A distant flock of sandpipers seems to appear and disappear, as the birds reveal their dark underparts then their pale undersides to the observer.