Amateur Dutch photographer Vincent Cornelissen captured this curious photograph of a goose that seemed to be flying upside down. The goose's body and wings are upside down, while its head is right-side up.
"The weather was bad, so I put on my waterproofs and sat with my back against a tree looking over a lake," Cornelissen said to KJZZ, "I saw that one of the three had trouble flying in a straight line. He was having a hard time which I thought was because of the wind. He seemed to be struggling, so I took some pictures of him."
"I immediately realized that I had captured something special, but at the same time, I was afraid that no one would believe me. The image looked like it was edited in Photoshop."
It turns out that birds do sometimes fly upside down in a maneuver that ornithologists call whiffling. The aerial maneuver causes the bird to briefly plummet towards the ground, before it reverses itself and fly like normal. The erratic motion looks like a falling leaf, and is often used to avoid predators.
Image: Vincent Cornelissen
#goose #flying #upsidedown #whiffling #ornithology #animalbehavior