You can steer one bird. Not the flock — nobody steers the flock. Try it on your own first: you'll shift two or three and they'll slip back, every time. Then find out what six others are worth.
One catch, and it isn't a bug: don't fly out ahead of everyone before you press it. Six joining you in empty sky turns nothing. Stay in the crowd.
Send in the peregrine. It will stoop and stoop and never take one out of the flock — that is not mercy, it is the whole reason the flock is there. A falcon works the edges. Steer yourself out on your own and it will come for you; get back in among the seven and it breaks off. Nothing here dies. Ballerini et al., PNAS 105(4), 2008.