{"id":20653,"date":"2017-05-26T18:14:40","date_gmt":"2017-05-27T01:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20653"},"modified":"2017-05-26T18:16:13","modified_gmt":"2017-05-27T01:16:13","slug":"heron-on-one-leg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20653","title":{"rendered":"Heron on one leg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A standing person who faints, falls over. Maintaining one&#8217;s balance\u00a0requires constant muscular adjustments. Maintaining one&#8217;s balance while standing on one leg is even more difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, many people have marvelled at the sight of a heron napping as it stands on one foot. Insights into such feats were recently supplied by a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/how-flamingo-balances-one-leg\">study of flamingoes.<\/a>\u00a0The authors found that balance aids built into the bird&#8217;s basic anatomy allow for a one-legged stance that demands little muscular effort. This stance is so stable that a bird sways less to keep itself upright when it appears to be dozing than when it\u2019s alert with eyes open. Indeed, even a dead bird can be prompted to balance on one foot, when it cannot be made to balance on two.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that some birds have a mechanism humans lack for stably balancing on a single leg.<\/p>\n<p>A week ago, a heron on a piling was standing on one leg. It is a common sight and, until the recent paper on the subject, seemed\u00a0inexplicable (2017\/05\/18).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-20654\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/heron170518s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Normally when a heron is hunting, it is positioned on two feet (2013\/07\/19).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-20657\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/heron130719bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A heron in a tree during really cold weather, is seen to balance on one foot (2012\/11\/20).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9090\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/heron121120s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>However, the frequent sight of a heron posed on a single leg always seems odd (2013\/12\/02).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9200\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/heron131202bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It has been seen so frequently that it must be a stable position for the bird (2006\/10\/14).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-20655\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/heronadult.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Indeed, even this view of (what appears to be a contortionist) must be normal (2009\/10\/15).<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-20656\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/heron091015a.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; A standing person who faints, falls over. Maintaining one&#8217;s balance\u00a0requires constant muscular adjustments. Maintaining one&#8217;s balance while standing on one leg is even more difficult. Consequently, many people have marvelled at the sight of a heron napping as it &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=20653\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20653"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20677,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20653\/revisions\/20677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}