Left, right,
left, right.
A non-obligatory but familiar cadence for bipeds, no? It’s so familiar we even see it in the bipedal roadrunner, which can fly but which tends not to. Neither would I bother flying, except by, well, exception, if I could run as well as they can.
Sorry for the fuzziness and the lighting. Buddy was doing what roadrunners do best when not skulking in the underbrush: running fast and unpredictably. I was doing what I do best when surprised by a bird-in-motion-in-the-open: having insufficiently fast settings on my camera and being on the wrong side of the bird itself, vis-à-vis the sun. But while the shots are not National-Geographic-worthy, they’re clear enough that you can see the left foot off the ground in the shot on the left; the right foot raised in the shot on the right.
What’s next? Left foot up again, of course. What else? Left, right; left, right.
No. Both feet off the ground, of course.
Well, there’s maybe one toe/talon on the left foot that’s still just barely grounded. It’s hard to be sure. If only the photo were clearer, eh?
Of course, after the roadrunner crossed the road, he stopped for a few seconds down-sun of me and posed nicely, as if conscious of his place in history (Ah, the noble roadrunner!). Then he took off, fast and unpredictably, in the manner of good broken-field runners everywhere.
Great catches of an elusive bird. And very nice of it to pose for you before taking off.
Yes maybe not National Geographic quality perhaps, but you showed the essentials without spending 6 months parked in a bird hide waiting for the bird to come by at just the right angle, just the right lighting….
Reminded me of a recent shoot I did of a (great) nephew in a 1500m race. I was surprised how often both feet were off the ground.
Yes, that’s the difference between running and speed-walking. As a former runner myself, I can say that runners are as often OFF the ground as on it. That’s why, I suspect, a good run feels airborne. Speed walking in the Olympics needs umpires to ensure that the contestant always has one foot in touch with the ground.
Jim T – Ah, I knew that about race-walking (keeping one foot on the ground at all times) from a ROM-COM in the 1960s about an Olympian racewalker (in Tokyo?). Yes, here it is: Walk, Don’t Run. But I hadn’t really transferred the knowledge to my understanding of running, in people or in birds. D’oh.
Jim R – Yeah, I don’t think I ever had the patience to be a professional wildlife photographer, but it’s fun to play at it. As for your great-nephew’s feet, maybe this reality was part of the inspiration for Ali’s “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
I knew a woman who learned photography as an assistant to National Geographic photographers. She estimated they shot 500 pictures (on rolls of film in those days) to get one “good enough” for publication. You, better than we, can guesstimate the time and cost involved. I am thrilled with your results. Especially on the second day of the third snowstorm in eight days. Ten inches and counting as the latest blitz lingers until tomorrow morning. “As pants the hart for water brooks . . . ” any view that shows a living creature with its feet on terra firma is reassuring that I will, too, come spring, which arrives officially, in about five weeks, although I will hold on my roadrunner imitation for another month or two later.
Laurna – 500 to 1, eh? Not a great ratio for aspiring pro-photographers. We, too, are hoping that spring arrives in “them thar parts” on schedule – because that aligns with our scheduled return. Stay strong!
Isabel – and here is a nit from me. A roadrunner looks closer to a chicken than a hawk or an owl. So in common usage, roadrunners would have claws while hawks, owls and other raptors have talons. Claws work best when digging in the dirt looking for grubs and insects. Talons work best for snatching up dinner on the fly.
John – Interesting. I think of roadrunners as formidable hunters (including picking small birds out of the air overhead), but Google tells me that they eat just about anything: insects, fruits, seeds, prickly pear, small birds, and snakes. Maybe we could settle on “super-sharp toes.” 🙂