Exactly. Real pioneers like Sir George Cayley, Octave Chanute, Dr. Langley, and Otto Lilienthal studied bird wings, and extensively documented their studies. No mention of boomerangs.
(The Wrights, by the way, contributed almost nothing to the design of their successful first plane. Were it not for an accident with the launching catapult, Dr. Langley would be celebrated as the first to fly, as Glenn Curtiss subsequently proved, and the Wrights would be unknown also-rans.)
You forgot F. W. Lanchester.
He obtained the equations of flight and aerodynamic equations by watching the path of small gliders above a long kitchen table. Identifying flight...stall and recovery he obtained the equations from graphs of the flight path and fit the equations to the graph. I can post images from his notebooks and patents...all his materials reside in the Launchester Library of Coventry University UK.