I finally got down to the beach and, well, I couldn’t see why anyone would want to be there!! There were no trees to sit on, the ground was all stony with only a very small strip of grass at the top and all that water!! No! Not my kind of place at all!
I did see a few herring gulls. The first one flew off when I asked him about his feet.
The second said his feet were very different from mine as they were made for swimming with. I asked him where he went swimming and he gave me a funny look and said, “In the sea stupid!”
Well, I didn’t like being called stupid as you can imagine so I left. On the way back up to the farm Mac said that the ducks and geese had similar feet to gulls so we went to talk to them. The first duck we spoke to was very sleepy and although she stuck a foot out we couldn’t get a good picture so I went to the geese. They were great and let us have a good look and their webbed feet.
They said that the web of skin between their toes helped them to swim better. I asked if feet like that were any good for catching things. “No!” said one, “but we don’t catch our food with our feet, we use our beaks.” I had a look at their big flat beaks and could see how different they were from owl beaks!
Isn’t it strange how we are all birds but we are really very different when you start looking closely!
Cheers for now!
Otis
