an interesting thing is that though birds have super-efficient lungs, they can be very fragile.

As any parrot owner knows, if you overheat a teflon pan, all the birds inside your house will die. So bird owners use stainless steel. There are other non-stick pans available, but it's really hard to wade through the marketing to figure out if overheating will kill the pet that's been in your family for years or even decades.

unrelated, the name of this article made me wonder if it was about thin air and lift, thinking how helicopters can't fly over everest.

But a mountain like everest might have a huge amount of updrafts to lift birds into the sky.

If you've ever stopped at an ridge overlook along california highway 1, you might see something curious. the ridges are bird-superhighways. the ocean air hits the cliffs and deflects upwards, and this updraft lets birds "surf" up and down the coast. So if you stand there and are patient, you'll see lines of gulls cruise by going north or south without flapping.