Have you ever picked up a magazine and wondered what the inspiration behind the front cover has been? In this new weekly blog series on Of Schemes and Memes, the art team at Nature will explain the decisions made in selecting their iconic front cover images and graphics.

To launch the new series of posts, we are looking for a super witty and smart title for the weekly blog (puns allowed/encouraged.)  Nature Publishing Group is offering the prize of a personal subscription to Nature for the best headline from our readers. Share your best entries with the hashtag #naturecovers on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or in the comments by Wednesday 29th January 2014 . Nature Publishing Group employees are also on a mission and love puns. We will choose a winner from our readers, but will choose the eventual headline from all the suggestions from our colleagues and readers.

Caption:

Northern bald ibises in V formation during a human-led migratory flight. Birds in the ‘V’ phase their wing-beats to path-match, allowing a trailing bird to exploit aerodynamic upwash from the bird in front. A bird flying directly behind flaps with opposite phasing in order to minimise the detrimental downwash from the leader’s wings. Photo by M. Unsold.

Northern bald ibises in V formation during a human-led migratory flight. Photo M. Unsold.

From the Art Desk:

Art Director, Kelly Krause, explains:

“To study the behaviour of Northern bald ibises during migratory flight, Steve Portugal and his team of researchers mounted custom-built data loggers on 14 ibises that accurately measured the body position and flapping dynamics of each bird. This photograph was taking during a human-led migratory flight, so what you don’t see in this particular shot is the aircraft used by the research team to observe the birds. What you can see, however, if you look closely, are the data loggers mounted on the birds.

“The team did a fantastic job of documenting their research with quality, high resolution photography, allowing us to showcase their work on our print cover. A similar photo is used in Fig 1 of their paper.”

For additional behind the scenes commentary each week, check out Nature Graphics Tumblr.

Read the full news story and watch the video below: