flying--a flying roadrunner is as much out of his element as a
swimming chicken--but when he is afoot. A. W. Anthony (1892) tells
us of a pair of birds that apparently enjoyed being chased by a
hound that could never catch them. He says:
At Hatchita [New Mexico] a pair came regularly to one of
the mines for water, a small pool having been formed near
the shaft, from the pumps. The visit was made at nearly the
same hour each forenoon, and was eagerly looked forward to
by a foxhound owned by one of the workmen. The dog never
failed to give chase as soon as the birds were sighted, and
the race was as much enjoyed by the birds as by the dog;
they seemed to have no difficulty whatever in keeping well
out of danger without taking wing, and usually found time
during the chase to stop at the water hole and get their
daily drink, after which they quickly disappeared.
H. C. Bryant (1916) quotes from Heermann that the roadrunner “may,
however, be overtaken when followed on horseback over the vast open
plains,” and Heermann is known to have seen “one captured by a
couple of dogs.”
Richard Hunt (1920), who was able to check with a speedometer the
actual speed of a roadrunner encountered “en route from Soledad
to the Galiban Range” in California, writes: “At the top speed to
which we provoked our victim, the famous runner was moving at the
tremendous rate of 10 miles an hour on a practically level piece of
road.”
H. H. Sheldon (1922a), who also checked the roadrunner’s running
speed with a speedometer, writes of the incident: “The car gained
on the bird until about five yards separated us, and I saw it
was running at its utmost speed. I instructed my friend, who was
driving, not to press him further, and for fully three hundred
yards the bird ran from the big monster in pursuit, the while
the speedometer registered exactly fifteen miles per hour. When
finally we approached very closely, the bird gave up and flew into
a palm, where I plainly saw it, beak agape and apparently very much
fatigued from the unusual exertion.”
There is no doubt in my own mind that a fully adult roadrunner,
can, for short distances, run faster than 15 miles an hour.
Athletic directors tell us that an average man (not an athlete) can
run 9 yards a second, or about 18 miles an hour. I know I can run
as fast as the average man, and I know I have failed many a time to
gain on a roadrunner that happened to appear on the road a short
distance ahead of me. I distinctly recall catching two _young_
roadrunners (with tails 7 or 8 inches long) in a little gully near
Fort Worth, Tex., in about the year 1913. I had quite a chase and
might never have caught them had they not been forced to run up a
steep embankment.
_Spring._--We have seen the roadrunner sneak off through the
weeds--a frightened bird. We have seen him capture lizards,
snakes, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas--a veritable monster.
But not until we have heard him sing do we know the finer side
(as Aldrovandus of old would say) of his nature. On fine spring
mornings he sings as the sun rises, and he may continue his
fervent if somewhat monotonous performance for an hour or more.
His favorite songperch is the eastern rim of a mesa where, full in
the fresh sunlight, he can see far and wide. If there is no mesa,
he chooses a dead tree or a high cactus. Here, directing his bill
downward until it almost touches his toes, he begins to coo. _Coo,
coo, coo, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh_, he calls, pumping out the
syllables in a hoarse, throaty voice, his head rising a little with
each _coo_, until the bill points upward, the pitch of the song
meanwhile dropping gradually lower. So he starts with head low and
coo high, and ends vice versa. Cattlemen say that before he begins
his song he “lays his beak on the rock.”
The pumped-out series of coos we have just described doubtless is
the roadrunner’s love song. Before giving it he may parade in a
prominent place, strutting with head held stiff and high, and wings
and tail drooping. On May 2, 1914, I witnessed what I believe were
certain courtship antics of the male before the female not far from
Fort Worth, Tex. According to the published account (Sutton, 1922)
of this performance, the bird’s “wings were spread, and he may have
been preening and taking a sun bath, but circumstances * * * led
me to think otherwise. Now and then he bowed, and affected a close
examination of his feet, only to raise his head again, drop his
wings, lift them again and spread his tail. * * * Before I knew it
[I] was discovered * * * and then, without wings spread, leaped
from the dead branch to the next lower one, whence on outstretched
wings he sailed to the ground. I rushed up to where he had been,
and was surprised to see two birds scuttling * * * off through the
vines.”
_Nesting._--The nest, which usually is situated in a low tree,
thicket, or clump of cactus 3 or 4 to 15 feet from the ground, is
a rather compact, though not deeply cupped affair, about a foot
in diameter and 6 to 8 inches high, with foundation of sticks and
lining of leaves, grass, feathers, mesquite pods, snakeskin, roots,
and dry flakes of cattle and horse manure. It is sometimes well
hidden, sometimes not. In the Black Mesa country of the far western
Oklahoma Panhandle John Semple and I found several nests in small
cedar trees that grew on the mesa sides. Here the nests were well
hidden, and since cedar trees were numerous our usual method of
locating nests was watching the parent birds.
Rarely the nest is built on the ground. Such a nest, containing six
eggs, was found by W. W. Brown in Sonora, Mexico, on May 15, 1905.
This nest is preserved in the John E. Thayer collection.
A. C. Bent writes me of a nest found by F. C. Willard in Cochise
County, Ariz., on April 23, 1916, “7 feet from the ground on a
packrat’s nest in a dense thicket of hawthorn.” This nest was
“merely a few leaves, etc., in a slight hollow in the rubbish of
the rat’s nest.” While Mr. Bent was hunting ravens’ nests among
the abandoned oil derricks in the Kettleman Hills, Calif., his
companion, J. R. Pemberton, told him that roadrunners sometimes
built their nests in the lower parts of the derricks, using the
sticks dropped by the ravens. Griffing Bancroft (1930) describes a
nest with complete set of two eggs found in Lower California in the
heart of a date palm * * * so well concealed that it could not be
seen until much of the foliage had been cut away.
_Eggs._--Roadrunner nests contain, as a rule, three to five or six
eggs. Occasionally two eggs comprise a complete set; and sets with
as many as 12 eggs have been recorded. Where large numbers of eggs
are found in one nest it is supposed that more than one female
has deposited them. Coues (1903) describes the eggs as “ovate or
elliptical, white in ground color with an overlying chalky film
which may take a slight yellowish tint, ranging in length from
1.45 to 1.75, averaging 1.55 x 1.20. They are laid at considerable
intervals; incubation begins as soon as a few are deposited, and
is believed to last 18 days for each egg. The development of the
chicks is rapid; perfectly fresh eggs and newly-hatched young may
be found together; and by the time the last young are breaking the
shell the others may be graded up to half the size of the adult.”
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The measurements of 55 eggs average 39.2 by 30.1
millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =44= by 30,
41 by =32=, and =34= by =27.5= millimeters.]
William L. and Irene Finley (1915) describe a typical nest in
which there were “one fresh egg, one egg just ready to hatch, two
featherless, greasy, black young, and two young ones about grown
and ready to leave home.” These authors were in a position to
watch this nest almost continuously for several days. They did not
observe more than one female parent. If, then, the several eggs
were laid by more than one female, it may be supposed that the
species is to some extent parasitic or promiscuous in this regard,
as the yellow-billed and black-billed cuckoos also are thought to
be.
Frank L. Burns (1915) also gives the period of incubation as
“18 days.” It is supposed that only the female incubates. That
incubation sometimes begins with the laying of the first egg rather
than “as soon as a few are deposited” (see above quotation from
Coues) has been observed by M. French Gilman (1915), who tells us
of a nest with four eggs in which “one hatched July 20, the others
on the three succeeding days.” In cases of this sort it is natural
to suppose that all eggs are laid by the same female.
Eggs are usually laid in April and May. W. E. D. Scott (1886) tells
us, however, of several nests found on the San Pedro slope of the
Catalina Mountains in Arizona, the earliest of which, discovered
March 17, 1885, at an elevation of 3,000 feet, contained two fresh
eggs. That two broods of young are sometimes, if not frequently,
reared in one season has been reported by numerous authors, though
I believe it has not been proved beyond doubt that fresh eggs found
in July are laid by females that have already succeeded in bringing
out one brood.
_Young._--Newly hatched young are odd, “featherless, greasy, black”
creatures with a reptilian appearance. I had a good deal to do with
young roadrunners in the vicinity of Fort Worth, Tex., as a boy, so
I quote my own description here (1922):
The nestling bird, be it ever so young, has an unmistakable
cuckoo-like expression in its face, though its eyes, upon
which a good portion of the facial expression depends,
are quite different from those of the adult, being of a
deep dull brown with a bluish pupil. * * * The eyelashes
are small, in fact scarcely apparent. Its whole external
appearance is very sombre, and rather dirty-looking, as
though the creature had been bathed in some unrefined oil,
which had not been properly administered. The white hairs,
each of which marks a coming feather, all lie in rows and
look as if they had been rudely combed into place. The
rather large, pale blue-gray feet are strong in the toes,
but very weak at the heel, so that the birds cling to the
fingers or the twigs of their nest with some power, but are
quite unable to rise. Whenever there were very many young
birds in the nest they presented a peculiarly scrambled
appearance, due, I believe, to the constant disturbance at
feeding time more than to restlessness, for they usually
lie quite still. By May 1 [the birds were taken from the
nest on April 29] feathers were appearing rapidly on my
young birds, first on the top of the head, back, and
wings, and then on the belly, tail, and throat. Once the
blood-quills had started to burst, development was very
rapid. On May 4 the birds were quite well feathered, the
tails being one and one-half inches long, and they were
quite able to walk unsteadily. It is at this period, or a
little before, that the young leave the nest, though there
must be innumerable dangers for the rather weak-legged
creatures. Several times I have come across young birds
able to run well, but still in trees, which leads me to
believe that the young may, like young Green Herons, spend
a portion of their early active life climbing about from
branch to branch.
During the spring and summer of 1914 I reared these two young
roadrunners, feeding them uncounted hundreds of grasshoppers, cave
crickets, tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, lizards, snakes, mice,
cotton rats, and small birds. They were the most entertaining pets
I ever had. Eventually they learned to capture their own food.
Concerning this period of their life I have published the following
paragraphs (1936):
After three weeks they became sturdy enough to catch
part of their own food. With patient coaxing they were
taught to pick up grasshoppers tossed to them, and finally
to run after and capture crippled insects. Content at
first, perforce, with sluggish, wingless nymphs which
were abundant, they stole about through the weeds, wings
pressed neatly against their slender bodies, snapping up
the insects as fast as they could find them. Grasshoppers,
often still alive and kicking, they swallowed with a toss
of the head and a hollow gulp. Large green or gray cave
crickets, which live in piles of boards, or in damp,
shadowy places, were especially prized. When a yellow- or
coral-winged grasshopper rose noisily from the path, the
birds crouched in momentary fear, but soon began to mark
the return to earth of the clackety aeronaut and to steal
up behind clumps of grass, intent upon a killing.
Finally they learned to capture the biggest, noisiest, and
wariest grasshoppers on the prairies. They would watch a
coral-wing in his courtship flight and, running stealthily,
wait until the performer dropped to the ground. With a
bound over low weeds, a dart across the open, and a final
rush with outspread wings and tail, they would frighten
their prey into the air, leap nimbly after him, nab him
unerringly with their bills, and descend gracefully on
outspread wings to beat him to insensibility with a whack
or two on a stone.
Once they had learned to capture grasshoppers, their food
problem was largely solved and, since they showed no
inclination to run away, they were at liberty most of the
time. They ran about the yard, playing with each other, or
catching insects. In the heat of mid-day they sought the
shelter of broad, cool leaves, and sprawled in the sand.
Daily, often many times daily, I took them for a walk
across the prairie. Following me closely or running at
my side, they watched the big world with eyes far keener
than my own. Grasshoppers which I frightened from the
grass they captured in side expeditions. If I paused near
a flat stone, they urged me on with grunts, bit gently
at my hands, and raced back and forth in an ecstasy of
anticipation.
I entertained misgivings concerning these flat stones.
What savage creatures might not they conceal? Could young
Road-Runners manage swift-tailed scorpions, sharp-toothed
mice, or poisonous spiders? Under the first stone there
were scorpions. The Road-Runners hesitated an instant,
as if permitting an untried instinct to take possession
of their brains, then rushed forward, thrust out their
heads, and attacked the scorpions precisely at their tails.
Perhaps these venomous tails received more than the usual
number of benumbing blows, but the scorpions were swallowed
with gusto.
I had not supposed that a Road-Runner would capture and
devour a tarantula. One day, however, we paused at the
tunnel of one of these big, furred spiders. Somewhat in the
spirit of experimentation, and following the method known
to all Texas boys, I teased the black Arachnid from her
lair by twirling a wisp of grass in her face. She popped
out viciously and jumped a good ten inches to one side.
With a dash one bird was upon the monster before she had
opportunity to leap a second time. A toss of the bird’s
head and one of the eight legs was gone. Free again, the
spider leaped upon her captor. The other bird now entered
the combat, snatched up the spider, and flicked off another
leg. One by one the legs went down, and finally the two
birds pulled apart and gulped the sable torso.
_Plumages._--The newly hatched roadrunner’s only plumage is coarse,
long, white or whitish hairs. These do not by any means cover
the dark-skinned body, but they apparently give the bird all the
protection it needs. At this stage the light-colored egg tooth is
noticeable, the feet are dark colored like the rest of the body,
the mouth lining has a peculiarly blotched appearance, and the
irides are dull brown.
As blood quills replace the long white hairs, the egg tooth
disappears, the legs and feet turn blue-gray, the skin about and
back of the eye lightens, and the blotching of the mouth lining
becomes less conspicuous. The sprouting feathers now bear at their
tips the white hairs of babyhood. Some of these hairs cling to the
plumage long after the bird leaves the nest.
When young roadrunners begin to capture their own food they wear a
plumage that is much like that of the adult. J. A. Allen (Scott,
1886) describes this plumage thus: “The chief difference in color
consists in the broad shaft stripes of the feathers of the neck and
breast being less sharply defined in the young than in the adult,
and in the brown edgings bordering the shaft stripes being paler.”
At this stage the bare skin about the eye becomes pale blue,
and the naked patch back of the eye light orange. Too, the eye
itself changes, a light-colored ring, which contrasts sharply with
the brown or gray-brown of the rest of the iris, forming about
the pupil. As the bird becomes older the bare skin of the face
brightens. Fully adult males, at the height of the nesting season,
are fairly resplendent with their high, steel-blue crest, brilliant
eye, and bright orange patch back of the eye.
The plumage worn by the young bird after it loses its natal hairs
is apparently the first winter plumage. Judging from such specimens
as I have seen, the postnuptial molt is the only complete molt of
the adult bird. Whether there is a partial prenuptial molt in young
or adult birds I cannot say. The roadrunner’s life is so strenuous
that he doubtless loses feathers frequently. Spring birds with
half-grown tail feathers may therefore not be performing a molt in
the usual sense of the word.
_Food._--Lizards (including the armored horned “toad”), small
snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and other spiders, centipedes and
millipedes, mice, cotton rats, ground-inhabiting small birds and
their eggs and young, young quail, insects of all sorts, various
fruits and seeds, including pricklypears: all these are eaten
by the roadrunner; and this considerable list but hints at the
rapacity and digestive powers of the gaunt bird. One of the most
thorough-going reports on the roadrunner’s food habits is that by
Dr. Harold C. Bryant (1916). Informing us that animal food makes
up slightly over 90 percent of the total food of the species in
California, Dr. Bryant says:
Almost any animal, from the smaller rodents down to tiny
insects, appears to be relished by this bird. Although
the stomachs examined showed no large percentage of
vertebrates, other published records show that reptiles
sometimes form a large part, if not the entire diet. Even
these larger elements of food are usually swallowed whole
at one gulp. That the digestive apparatus is powerful is
evidenced by the fact that bone, hair, and feathers pass
through the digestive tract, and are not thrown back out
through the mouth in the form of pellets, as is the case
with some hawks and most owls.
A diagram in Dr. Bryant’s paper makes it plain that grasshoppers
and crickets form a considerable part (36.82 percent) of the
roadrunner’s food in California. Beetles form 18.2 percent; and
seeds and fruits, cutworms and caterpillars, bugs, ants, bees,
wasps, scorpions, lizards, mammals, fly larvae, birds, and
“miscellaneous” items go to make up the rest.
Game officials are usually opposed to the roadrunner, for the bird
is reputed to be an enemy of young quail. Regarding the bird’s
reputation as a quail destroyer, W. L. McAtee (1931) tells us that
“the Road-runner is persecuted almost throughout its range * * *
as an alleged destroyer of Quail eggs, and state bounties are
even paid for its destruction. Yet the Road-runner never has been
known to be a special enemy of Quail,” and it doubtless “eats more
scorpions, centipedes, and tarantulas, those poisonous nuisances of
the Southwest, than it does Quail eggs.”
Aldo Leopold (1922) writes of shooting a roadrunner “with a
light-colored object in his bill.” Examining the spot where the
bird had fallen he “found a dead [quail] chick, still limber and
warm but unmutilated * * * still in the downy stage, with ⅛-inch
pin feathers on the wing--smaller than a domestic chick when
hatched.”
S. S. Visher (1910) writing of birds found by him in Pima County,
Ariz., tells us that roadrunners “have been seen leaving the nest
of Gambel’s Quails carrying an egg in their beak.”
That the roadrunner will occasionally capture birds as large as a
mockingbird is apparent from several published accounts including
that by Robert S. Woods (1927a) who tells us of “an immature but
full-grown mockingbird” captured though not actually killed by a
roadrunner near Azusa, Calif.; and that by Dr. W. K. Fisher (1904)
who reports that a roadrunner was seen to “remove from a nest a
young mockingbird and devour it” in Mission Valley, near San Diego,
Calif.
In a letter to A. C. Bent, Mr. Woods (who is quoted above) speaks
of a short article written by the late Rev. St. John O’Sullivan,
of San Juan Capistrano Mission, “describing a roadrunner’s method
of killing a swift by lying in wait in a creek-bed near Palm
Springs and suddenly springing into the air to knock down one of
the birds which passed within its reach.” This capturing swifts in
air seems perfectly plausible to me, for I recall seeing my captive
roadrunners capturing English sparrows in much the same manner.
Walking about with a noncommittal air that was comically suggestive
of the chickens that fed nearby, they gradually grew nearer to
a sparrow, then with a dash to one side and a tremendous leap
snatched the fleeing victim from the air.
A. W. Anthony (1896) tells us of suddenly coming upon a roadrunner
that had just finished despatching a wood rat (_Neotoma_). “The
bird reluctantly withdrew as I came upon the scene,” he writes,
“leaving the rat, which I found to be quite dead.”
My own captive birds caught and killed a cotton rat (_Sigmodon_)
that lived in a stone wall near our house in Fort Worth, Tex. Two
or three times a day this rat scurried across a gap in this wall,
and the birds came to look upon him as a possible meal. At first
his speed and considerable size kept the enemy at a safe distance,
but their interest sharpened daily, and eventually they formed the
habit of loitering near the runway. One day I heard a squeal of
terror and ran up in time to see the bewildered animal running this
way and that, trying to escape two lightning-quick demons who never
really held him, but pinched him, tossed him, dealt him blows,
buffeted him, made him weary with fighting for life. Over his limp
form the roadrunners had an argument. He was heavy. No sooner would
one bird start to swallow than the other would be tugging at the
hind foot or tail, and down he would drop. I finally cut the rat in
two.
Carroll Dewilton Scott has contributed a note concerning
roadrunners that catch half-grown “gophers” in his garden at
Pacific Beach, Calif. Describing one of the birds he says:
“Finally, after ridiculous gulpings and twistings of his neck
he got the gopher down, balanced his tail, and ambled away from
another conquest.”
Mrs. Bailey (1928) tells us of two roadrunners observed at
Carlsbad, N. Mex., that “snapped their bills and chased each other
up into a cottonwood on the bank where there were caterpillar
nests. To determine what they had been eating, one was shot and
its gizzard was found to contain not only caterpillar skins but a
number of large grasshoppers, a large black cricket, beetles, a
centipede six inches long, and part of a garter snake a foot long.
The rest of the snake was down in the crop and the barely swallowed
end up near the bill.”
Regarding the economic status of the roadrunner in California,
Dr. Bryant (1916) says: “A preponderance of evidence favors the
bird. The destruction of such unquestioned pests as grasshoppers,
cutworms, caterpillars, and wireworms and of such rodents as mice
is to be desired even if the amount of destruction be relatively
small. The taking of this sort of food on wild land is evidence
that this bird when feeding in cultivated fields is likely to be
distinctly beneficial.”