AFAR

 Advanced Facility For Avian Research
   I have been a bit under the weather, but overhead the skies have been clear and the fall weather fine. That combination resulted in a loss in the  production of posts for MM, but I can’t say there has been an increase in the number of complaints from readers. The few who appear to stumble upon something in MM, do so whether I am writing or not and the royalties continue to roll into my offshore accounts.

 

  While high in the clear sky the birds have continued their migration south, there are some birds in London flying continuously, but going nowhere. Their wings are flapping at the Advanced Facility for Avian Research up at Western University. I told you about that place four years ago in “For The Birds” and the information there is still useful. 
    More is provided, and AFAR noticed, in a recent article in the New York Times. It is good that we can read some local news, even if it comes from afar. Online you will find it under, “What Flying in a Wind Tunnel Reveals About Birds,” on Oct 11. It appears in print in the NYT on Oct. 15, with the title, “Some Birds Migrate Thousands of Miles Every Autumn: How Exactly Do They To They Manage It? Scientists Built a Flight Chamber to Find Out.” Emily Anthes is the author. Here is a portion that provides some of the questions for which answers are sought by those up at Western. 

  "It is understandably difficult to monitor the internal workings of a wild bird while it is soaring thousands of feet in the air. So Dr. Guglielmo sends his avian test subjects on simulated journeys. At the Advanced Facility for Avian Research, he and his colleagues use a hypobaric wind tunnel, which functions, in essence, as a treadmill for airborne birds....

   Scientists can send air through the main test chamber at varying speeds, up to about 40 miles per hour. Not all birds take to the tunnel — “about half of them will be good fliers,” Dr. Guglielmo said — but those that do can flap their wings for hours at a time while remaining, conveniently, in one place.

Researchers can adjust not only the wind speed inside the tunnel but also the temperature, humidity and air pressure to simulate different flying conditions and altitudes. They can study the physics of flight, mapping how air flows around the bodies of different birds, or focus on avian physiology: How does a bird’s breathing change at higher altitudes? How does diet affect flight performance?"
For additional information see: AFAR. 

Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory
   The hypobaric wind tunnel at Western is not the only wind tunnel at Western. Back in the mid-1960s, UWO was "considered the birthplace of the modern practice of wind engineering."  For more details see this digital heritage plaque.      

Post Script
   It used to be the case that no one knew where the birds went when the weather turned cold. A clue was finally provided by a stork.
See: "The University of the Unusual (2) - The Mystery of Avian Migration."