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Wind Tunnel for Birds
bgood writes "'What, a swallow, carrying a coconut? ...' The Department of Animal Ecology at the University of Lund in Sweden uses a modern low-speed wind tunnel specially crafted for bird experiments. The birds are trained to fly in the 'test-section' and the tunnel can be tilted up or down to simulate ascent and descent. This link contains plenty of detail, complete with bird pictures. For those of you who yearn to build your own (non-bird-compliant) wind tunnel, you can find instructions in this Scientific American article."
As someone mentioned above, shorebirds have an amazing ability to pig down and generate a lot of muscle and fat in a very short period of time (a large fraction of their body weight in 24-48 hours).
So - are they more efficient when their tank's full or empty, i.e. heavy after "refueling" or light as after a long stint in the air (they're known to migrate hundreds of miles between stops).
The reference I saw a few days ago says the answer, measured in this wind tunnel, is that they're more efficient when their tank's full (so to speak).
The studying of the physiology of migratory shorebirds may be important for conservation, too. There are generally limited areas in which shorebirds concentrate to feed on migration. While some migrate inland, in many species virtually all individuals migrate along the coast. And, of course, in most parts of the world coastal areas are under heavy developmental pressure. People like the beach, too...
Examples of such concentration areas include Delaware Bay in the eastern United States and Bowerman Basin in the western US.
And human use of natural resources also has an impact (in particular the harvesting of horsehoe crabs on the east coast, they're the source of some important chemical but I forget what exactly - we don't eat them, obviously!)
More knowledge about the physiology of these species might help us predict the impacts of certain types of development or resource consumption.