What mutations are needed for a particular trait (e.g. wings) to arise?

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Think about it like this - what are the all the possible errors due to mutation that could happen? And what is the likelihood that one of them will be beneficial? Has this been ever calculated mathematically?

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Well, it is clear that birds did evolve from non-flying dinosaurs, that this evolution occurred over a large amount of time and over many, many generations, and that physical characteristics arise, largely, from the genetics of the individual. So it seems pretty clear that genetic mutations of some sort were responsible for the evolution of flight in birds.We also know that random mutations do occur in the genomes in individuals, and that these mutations can be passed on to the next generation, and so random mutations would seem to be the best source for the mutations that led to flight. At least until someone finally comes up with a source of non-random mutations that may have occurred in the evolutionary history of birds.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

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I understand this but what I am driving at is that the successive series of mutations is not likely to produce anything useful

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But it isn't just a successive series of mutations. In one generation, there will be many, many individuals with mutations; there will be lots and lots of mutations in that generation. Of these, a very few mutations will be advantageous and selected for, and the individuals in the succeeding generations will predominately have that (or those) mutations. But the next generation will have its mutations, many, many mutations. A few of these will be selected for.After many, many, many generations, the population will be rather different from the population at the beginning. In what way the population will be different would be impossible to predict at the beginning; however, it is entirely plausible after several tens of millions of years, the final population will be significantly different that the initial population.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw