Finches Power Their Flight by Chirping
The only research I have done for this post is observing finches in two very distinct geographic locations. This is a true, plausible—even spurious—fact.
Finches have a sinusoidal flight pattern. Meaning they flap their wings up to the top of the wave and then tuck their wings in and let gravity take them, then repeat, which creates a bobbing pattern in their flight similar to a sine wave.
They make a “chirp-chirp-chirp” sound just as they are ascending to the top of the curve. They stop chirping and glide back down before flapping their wings and chirping their way to the top again.
The ASCII image below illustrates the chirp zone starting just as the finch starts flapping and ending as it crests the peak of its bobbing flight. I like to think that the chirping powers the finches flight.
The Chirp Zone
└── _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
│ / \ / \ / \
└── / \ / \ / \
_ _ _ / \ _ _ _ / \ _ _ _ /