I decided to do a quick field guide page of Max’s flock. For those who don’t know, these guys and gals are from a book series by James Patterson: “Maximum Ride” which I highly recommend.

I had to ignore the fact that you simply can’t scientifically-accurately put wings on humans and have the humans still look like regular humans with just wings tacked on. A lot of their physiology would have to change for it to work. Patterson has explained that these six persons have had avian DNA grafted into their formerly human DNA—which opens up TONS of questions for me (since I know a little bit about birds), but I’ve decided to ignore as many of those questions as I can. If you're curious about the questions I came up with, I wrote an essay about it, "The Biological Inaccuracies of Maximum Ride." It's in my gallery.

So what type of wings to give these bird-kids? They all do long-distance flying at great speed in the books (80-90 mph), say that their flight is energetically expensive, yet they also soar in kettles of hawks, can take off directly from the ground, and supposedly fold their wings up and hide them under normal clothing against their backs. It’s impossible to fold up a 15 foot wing (which has only two joints distal to the shoulder) no matter how narrow it is, to fit against a 3 foot long back, so I had to ignore that.

There are four types of wing found in the avian world:

Slotted High-Lift (easy air-assisted soaring, low energy needs, low-speed, high lift [raptors and storks])

High-Aspect Ratio (constant soaring, high-speed, low maneuverability, high lift [pelagic sea birds])

Elliptical (high maneuverability, low lift, energetically expensive [song birds, forest birds])

High-Speed (lots of flapping, low lift, high speed, high control, energetically expensive [long distance migrants and birds that feed on the wing])

I ended up making these wings a mix of Slotted High-Lift and High-Speed. I chose wings from the real avian world that I thought reflected a good shape for each of them partly based on which bird Angel says each of them resemble, though in almost all cases I’ve changed the feather color from the original, and often adjusted the overall wing length and width. For color, I’ve tried to stick with what Patterson says, but in some cases wing color hasn’t been mentioned, so I got to be creative.

Max: Angel called her a hawk. Max’s wings here are based off Osprey wings, then tweaked to be a little narrower than a true Slotted High-Lift wing, closer to a High-Speed wing, which makes sense for her.

Fang: Angel says he’s also a hawk. Of all wings here his wings are closest to an actual Slotted High-Lift wing. I based them off a Red-Tailed Hawk wing. Might explain why he likes kettling so much.

Iggy: based off a Snow Goose wing. Angel calls him an albatross—but they have High-Aspect Ratio wings, which do not reflect at all how any of these bird-kids fly. The color of his wings has never been mentioned…that I recall.

Nudge: Angel calls her a pheasant, which have Elliptical wings. I based her wings off a Ring-Necked Pheasant, but then adjusted them longer and narrower. They are still not very good long flight wings, but that might explain why Max says Nudge is always so hungry and why she had trouble kettling.

Gasman: Angel thought he might be an owl. I used a Northern Saw-whet Owl for his wings, but again tweaked their shape, giving him less of an Elliptical and more of a Slotted High-Lift wing. The color of his wings is never mentioned…that I recall.

Angel: she calls herself a swan, so I gave her Tundra Swan wings. I didn’t tweak them much, leaving her with a nearly true High-Speed wing.

These characters are trademarked by James Patterson, but the art is all original and mine. Art thieves will be put in a fenced field full of Erasers (read the books, you’ll get it). Thanks!