Are your skills up to speed?
“Given the factors ranged against accurate judgement of speed, it is a wonder that we hit anything at all”
It’s only when you drive down a country road and you have a pigeon fly parallel with your moving vehicle that you come to appreciate its true cruising speed — and it’s not, as published, 35mph.
When last I glanced at my speedometer in this situation, it read 48mph and yet the bird looked effortless. Even allowing for the fact that car manufacturers err on the side of caution with the calibration of speedometers, that is still a near 30% margin of error between the pigeon’s accepted speed and my observation. There’s a reason people race them.
The tendency that we have to ask ‘what is the fastest?’ (in this case ‘what is the fastest bird we pursue?’) is one that children all over the world have in fiercely contested games of Top Trumps and online Pokémon raids (if you
