In my Retractable Landing Gear blog posting, we examined what large birds do with their feet after taking off. The short answer was that they tuck their feet and legs closely under their bodies, making an aerodynamically smooth surface -- much like an airplane's landing gear folding inward. But as you can see from the photo above, there are also other uses for those feet during flight. This osprey at the Outer Banks in North Carolina last May was on his way home bringing a very fresh fish for dinner (still wriggling), gripped securely in his un-retracted talons.
Sometimes a bird's legs are simply too long to tuck completely underneath. This blue heron near the Ballard Locks in Seattle showed that situation last April:
Of course, landing gear is also useful for, well, landing. At the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden a number of years ago, this duck demonstrated a water landing for me by first flaring his wings, then using his webbed feet as water skis:
But my favorite demonstration of avian landing gear in action was this Bald Eagle in the Tetons near Jackson Hole in September:
The eagle's strong, sharp talons turned a dead tree root into a nice perch from which to survey his domain.
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