{"id":20426,"date":"2023-12-08T17:21:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T22:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/?p=20426"},"modified":"2023-12-08T17:21:53","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T22:21:53","slug":"roadrunner-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/20426","title":{"rendered":"Roadrunner once&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UnmHgnPPkkQ?si=uW9bt48TFQptHkIW\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A confession: I&#8217;ve had a series of roadrunner posts rattling around in my head for a year and a half or so. Did I acually write them? We all know the answer. Just now I was about to post some pix to Instagram and realized that I had a post&#8217;s worth of captioning, so here goes. Not what I&#8217;d planned as the 1st roadrunner post, but perhaps this will break the logjam.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Roadrunner public art\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/doncoyote\/53383788852\/in\/datetaken\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53383788852_88021161fd.jpg\" alt=\"Roadrunner public art\" width=\"500\" height=\"342\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Word of the Day is zygodactyl. Most bird feet are three toes in front, 1 in back; they&#8217;re anisodactyl. A few, including many woodpeckers, owls, parrots and cuckoos, have two in front and two behind: they&#8217;re zygodactyl.<\/p>\n<p>This is a left foot I salvaged from a roadkill roadrunner yesterday (not to worry, legal eagles, I disposed of it after taking a couple pix). The X &#8211; and thus the very distinctive roadrunner track &#8211; is obvious.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Left foot of a roadrunner\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/doncoyote\/53384885338\/in\/datetaken\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53384885338_9921f8755a_z.jpg\" alt=\"Left foot of a roadrunner\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>After looking at the foot for a bit, I had a question. Does the same toe rotate back in all zygodactyl birds? Is there zygodactyl chirality?? Turns out the answer is yes, same toe always. BECAUSE THERE&#8217;S A DIFFERENT WORD IF THE OTHER TOE GOES BACK!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"zygodactyl\/heterodactyl\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/doncoyote\/53385166465\/in\/datetaken\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/53385166465_4571b9ce47_w.jpg\" alt=\"zygodactyl\/heterodactyl\" width=\"400\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In the above diagram (yanked from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bird_feet_and_legs\">this Wikipedia page<\/a>) we&#8217;re looking at right feet, 4 is the outer front toe in anisodactyl birds and 2 is the inner toe. From that same Wikiped page, &#8220;heterodactyl arrangement only exists in trogons.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>New goal: see a zygodactyl bird (roadrunner) and a heterodactyl bird (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elegant_trogon\">elegant trogon<\/a>) in the same area. If there are still a couple trogons hanging around far southern Arizona this January (there were last year), it might be possible after Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A confession: I&#8217;ve had a series of roadrunner posts rattling around in my head for a year and a half or so. Did I acually write them? We all know the answer. Just now I was about to post some &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/archives\/20426\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creatures"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqxx-5js","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20427,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20426\/revisions\/20427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hawkdog.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}