Funky Foot

by AnnaJo Vahle

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Dimensions

16.000 x 20.000 x 0.250 inches

Title

Funky Foot

Artist

AnnaJo Vahle

Medium

Painting - Acrylic On Gessobord

Description

I only exaggerated the colors a little bit in the impressionistic portrait of an American Coot. Perhaps it was the lighting, but somehow this looked blueish to me. I based this acrylic painting on some photographs that I took at the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge in Central Florida. This particular coot was on a muddy shore in the Indian River.
With a duck-ish head, a body shaped like a chicken, and a pointy beak to match, the American Coot looks like the most impractical mash-up of birds—and that’s just in the water. On land, you can see another part of its wacky appearance: those feet.
The bird’s long, yellow-green toes have two to three fleshy lobes that are attached to its tall, sturdy legs. The oversize, bizarre-looking feet are striking.
While its shape might look strange to the human eye, the curious configuration of the coot's foot makes the bird adept at getting around both on water and on land, unlike most other waterfowl. Comparable to webbing on a duck's foot, the palmate toes help a coot push through the water. On land, the lobes fold back when the bird lifts its foot, which facilitates walking on a variety of surfaces like mud, grass, and even ice.
In the water, the coot doesn’t just use those big feet for propelling itself; they are also important for getting airborne. To take flight, the birds run across the surface of the water and furiously flap their wings before they lift off.
The fleshy lobes are good for tussling, too. If you spend any time watching a big flock of coots, you'll see fights erupt between them and they will sort of rear up and lean back and claw at each other with their feet.

Uploaded

January 11th, 2023

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