Quote:
Originally Posted by The Sixth Wizard
I don't think dragons can hover; any soaring lizards of today can not fly efficiently and, more to the point, flying lizards of the dinosaurs' time such as Quetzalcoatlus could not hover or even take off without updrafts, and those creatures were built purely for flight. Smaug is built like a lizard in Tolkien's pictures, not a cat. Lizards such as Australian goannas can not curl up like a dragon would need to do in order to land on buildings. Therefore the dragon would be forced to do a series of fly-bys, with fire breath in short bursts, before wheeling around and attacking again. Indeed, in the book, Smaug is described as "swooping".
|
Everyone knows that most if not all dragons have relatively small wings considering their body size, and therefore use a rotary, high-speed and constant wingstroke like a hummingbird or bumblebee to fly. This creates a flying/fighting style that is both humorous and terrifying to behold.
But, as TSW points out, perhaps Smaug had relatively large wings and flew more like a buzzard or condor (primarily soaring and using an occasional vertical wing stroke to recover altitude and velocity). If so, he might need to use a high altitude (i.e. Lonely Mountain) launching site and thermal updrafts to take flight.
So perhaps Smaug did not land in Lake Town because he knew he would not be able to take off again from that low altitude situation, and without a bridge would be trapped unless he could swim (which is unknown).