The key to high manoeuvre ability in bird flight lies in the combined morphing of wings and tail. The perching of a wild Haliaeetus Albicilla without running or wing flapping is recorded and investigated using a high-speed digital video. A shape reconstruction method is proposed to describe wing contours and tail contours during perching. The avian airfoil geometries of the Aquila Chrysaetos are extracted from noncontact surface measurements using a ROMBER 3D laser scanner. The wing planform, chord distribution and twist distribution are fitted in convenient analytical expressions to obtain a 3D wing geometry. A three-jointed arm model is proposed to associate with the 3D wing geometry, while a one-joint arm model is proposed to describe the kinematics of tail. Therefore, a 3D bird model is established. The perching sequences of the wild eagle are recaptured and regenerated with the proposed 3D bird model. A quasi-steady aerodynamic model is applied in the aerodynamic predictions, a four-step Adams–Bashforth method is used to calculate the ordinary differential equations, thus a BFGS based optimization method is established to predict the perching motions.

Raptors can change the shape and area of their wings to an exceptional degree in a fast and efficient manner, surpassing other birds, insects, or bats. Some researchers have focused on the functional properties of muscle skeletons, mechanics, and flapping robot design. However, the wing motion of the birds of prey has not been measured quantitatively, and synthetic bionic wings with morphing abilities similar to raptors are far from reality. Therefore, in the current study, a 3D suspension system for holding bird carcasses was designed and fabricated to fasten the wings of Falco Peregrinus with a series of morphing postures. Subsequently, the wing skeleton of the falcon was scanned during extending motions using the computed tomography (CT) approach to obtain three consecutive poses. Subsequently, the skeleton was reconstructed to identify the contribution of the forelimb bones to the extending/folding motions. Inspired by these findings, we propose a simple mechanical model with four bones to form a wing-morphing mechanism using the proposed pose optimisation method. Finally, a bionic wing mechanism was implemented to imitate the motion of the falcon wing—divided into inner and outer wings with folding and twisting motions. The results show that the proposed four-bar mechanism can track bone motion paths with high fidelity.