Although Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is known to have studied bird flight, few people realise that he was the first to document flight maneuvers, now called dynamic soaring. Birds use these maneuvers to extract energy from wind shear for sustained flight. A recent paper published in Notes and Records explores Leonardo’s early description of dynamic soaring, which is one of his major aerodynamic discoveries. This predates, by almost 400 years, the first generally-accepted explanation of the physics of this soaring technique by Lord Rayleigh in 1883. We spoke to the author, Professor Dr Philip Richardson.