46 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Carroll Dewilton Scott has contributed a note concerning roadrun- 

 ners 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 Carls- 

 bad, 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 grass- 

 hoppers, cutworms, caterpillars, and wireworms and of such rodents 

 as mice is to be desired even if the amount of destruction be rela- 

 tively small. The taking of this sort of food on wild land is evidence 

 that this bird w^hen feeding in cultivated fields is likely to be 

 distinctly beneficial." 



Behavior. — Anyone who has observed the roadrunner closely knows 

 what an entertaining creature it is. Its voracity keeps it on the 

 alert for food. To capture a grasshopper one moment, a race-runner 

 lizard the next, and a tarantula the next requires strength, speed, and 

 prowess. If nymph grasshoppers are numerous, the bird has no 

 trouble in obtaining a meal. But flying grasshoppers are difficult to 

 overtake ; lizards escape because of the brittleness of their tails ; and 

 tarantulas have burrows into which they can pop when danger 

 threatens. 



Not often does one see a wild roadrunner capturing its food. I 

 recall watching one a year or two ago, not far from Packsaddle Lake, 

 a small, artificial body of water in western OMahoma. I had climbed 

 a sandy mound. Peering through the sagebrush, I saw a roadrunner 

 under a bush not far away, busy feeding. He ran out into the sun- 

 light now and then, but his attention was directed principally to 

 grasshoppers that must have been feeding on the leaves. These he 

 snatched, with nimble leaps upward, in the tip of his bill. To reach 

 the insects that were in the midst of the bush, he scrambled noisily 

 through the twigs, caught a few, then sprang back to the ground to 

 catch those that had fallen or jumped out. 



W. E. Allen (1932) gives us a breezy description of the capture 

 of a small bird by a roadrunner that had been running just ahead of 

 him. He says: 



