Tiptoeing through the surf.
· by Roy Edlund
For years I’ve told people that I love willets. To me they're majestic in their plainness.
But the thing i noticed from the beginning was their knees. The way they bend backwards. They seemed alien.
The other day, I was talking with someone that knows some things about bird anatomy, and he told me those aren’t knees. I tried not to take his laughing personally.
Anyway, the real knee is up near the body, tucked under the feathers where you never see it. It bends forward, same as yours and mine.
That joint halfway down the leg, the one I’ve been admiring all this time, is actually the ankle and that long skinny gray part below it isn’t a shin. It’s foot.
And that means the willet walking down the beach is on its tippy toes on a pair of very long feet.
I’ve been shooting these birds for years and called them sturdy, grounded, stubborn little things that stand their ground in the surf. And the whole time they were up on their tiptoes.
That's impressive.
There’s one more thing those feet are good for. When a willet stands in cold November water, the warm blood heading down the leg passes right alongside the cold blood coming back up, and hands off its heat on the way.
The feet run cold on purpose, the body stays warm, and the bird stands there in water I wouldn’t put a toe in, looking like it hasn’t noticed.
I’ll probably keep calling them knees. But now I know better and so do you.
Love from here. ❤️
Prints of the photos in this post are available in the Beach Bum Gallery on paper, canvas and metal.