I wonder if when the half of the duck’s brain is sleeping the opposite foot is kicking randomly like my sleeping dog does (and maybe I do it too!).
Or maybe this is akin to a screensaver: the duck keeps one leg kicking so it doesn’t freeze in place! Just some random theories…. ChrisP ______________________ Chris Pelkie Information/Data Manager; IT Support Bioacoustics Research Program Cornell Lab of Ornithology 159 Sapsucker Woods Road Ithaca, NY 14850 On Mar 8, 2015, at 08:11, Meena Madhav Haribal <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi all, Yesterday , I too went looking for birds at IYC, but my goal was to observe behaviors. I arrived there and got out and from the top parking area I looked at the ducks in the bay and first thing I saw was T What intrigued me most is how the ducks, geese and swans sleep. Some of them sleep with their eyes tucked inside the feathers and others with, only beak tucked inside the feathers and eyes outside. I saw several hundreds of them asleep in the water. But many of them were spinning around. Something similar I watched on Seneca River too where the sleeping mergansers were spinning around. They remained almost in the same location in spite of river flowing. So how do they do it? At least mergansers I could see they were paddling slowly in spite of sleeping. My conclusion was probably they paddle with one feet and thus they rotate round and round. Same thing happens if we paddle in one direction only in a canoe or kayak. Anybody has any insight about the mechanism? It would be cool to learn. Meena Haribal Ithaca NY 14850 42.429007,-76.47111 http://www.haribal.org/ http://meenaharibal.blogspot.com/ Ithaca area moths: https://plus.google.com/118047473426099383469/posts Dragonfly book sample pages: http://www.haribal.org/dragonflies/samplebook.pdf -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME> Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> Archives: The Mail Archive<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html> Surfbirds<http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds> BirdingOnThe.Net<http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html> Please submit your observations to eBird<http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>! -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
