Re: Bird posture

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Michael Lovejoy (michael@palaeoproductions.fsnet.co.uk) wrote:

<Can anybody tell me what kind of angle raptors hold their backs at, when
they are perched?>

  Like most birds, raptors orient themselves between vertical and 45
degrees in relaxing or sleeping poses, and between 45 and horizontal when
watching something below them, and are alert. Raptors will also survey
around them from a lone perch vertical, and many other birds do this as
well.

<Also, how much variation is there in spine angle is there in perched
birds generally? Do they get nearly vertical or are they closer to
horizontal?>

  I answered that above ... it has a lot to do with activity and what they
are looking at. The best vertical perchers are hummingbirds and raptors,
the best horizontal ones are wrens, generally to do with retricial (tail
fan) balancing, I am to understand.

  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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