Fig. 1.

Lovebirds fly at constant ground speed toward a goal irrespective of lateral gusts by turning their body into the gust. (A) Flight arena. Using IR light, 13 cameras automatically tracked marker clusters on the body and head (1,000 Hz); grayscale cameras recorded high-speed (HS) video (500 Hz). (B) Visual environments simulated a cave (uniform black), lake (horizontal stripe), and forest (vertical stripes). (C) The gust generators produced still (no gust), cross (side gust), and shear (opposing side gusts) environments. (D) The ground speed of lovebirds is somewhat higher in visually richer environments, but is not modified by gust condition (N = 3; separated by bird in SI Appendix, Fig. SF5). (E) Lovebirds orient their head toward the goal and their body into the gust across visual conditions (PDF = probability density function; histograms are stacked).