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COLUMN: Birds, our fellow bipeds

Glaucous-winged Gull with webbed feet. (Harry Fuller/Special to Salem Reporter)

We two-legged animals must know we’re outnumbered. All those insects and spiders, not to mention crabs, starfish, squid and centipedes. There are mostly four-footers among our fellow mammals. At the other end—snails, slugs, snakes and earthworms. Could that be why we feel so akin to our feathered friends? Crows walk around like me, a doddery old man. Sparrows hop across the path like a bouncy toddler. Loons swim like the ablest of scuba divers. 

Our species has many uses for our feet—not just walking and running and climbing and swimming. There are sports where kicking the ball matters, games and dances where jumping counts, driving machines with pedals. Stirrups, shovels and spades, riding lawn mowers, many vacuum cleaners, some trash cans, ladders—all assume foot power from us. Well, we are eons of evolution behind birds when it comes to foot fitness.

Ducks, geese, swans and many other diving birds have webbed feet. Streamlined, feathered bodies just enhance waterfowls’ skills. We cannot begin to approach their water speed and endurance and efficiency. Some puffin family members can dive down 600 feet. Many water birds need to run across the surface to take off.  

Ostriches have a deadly kick. Many eagles, and even modest-sized hawks, have a tough grip that sinks talons into victims and locks them there. Osprey hunt fish and they have special bumps inside their talons to give them tight grip through the protective layers of slime on most fish. Many songbirds can grab a limb at dusk, lock their toes in place and sleep safely all night. They must awaken to unlock those gripping toes. 

Birds called nighthawks have tiny toes that have one function—preening. One toe is a fine comb to clean insects out of the bristles around the nighthawk’s mouth. Woodpeckers have feet especially shaped for quick vertical climbing—two toes pointing up, balanced by two toes pointed down that stab into the bark. Swifts have hook-like feet for hanging inside hollow trees and the unlined old chimneys we supply them. Swifts cannot stand or walk. 

Some grassland birds can run very fast—roadrunners (just like the ancient cartoons), killdeer, pipits, horned larks. They’ll out-run a track star. Coots may be the most amazing—they are good at swimming, diving and running. They have a combo foot with long, individual toes, but all are lobed to strengthen each stroke under water. Then there are the legendary big feet—herons, egrets, bitterns, rails. Each has over-sized toes for easy walking across soft mud or reed-clogged wetlands. Tree climbers like nuthatches and creepers have very sharp, hooked toenails to use tree bark as a sidewalk.  

We bipeds should stick together.

For information about upcoming Salem Audubon programs and activities, see www.salemsudubon.org, or Salem Audubon’s Facebook page.

Harry Fuller is an Oregon birder and natural history author of “Freeway Birding.” He is a member of the Salem Audubon Society. Contact him at [email protected] or http://www.towhee.net/. His “Some Fascinating Things About Birds” column will be appearing regularly in Salem Reporter.

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